>If I'm following Bob's recipe for Chicken Gravy, how much turkey >should I use? I'll probably make a small batch to see if Mr. Fussy >will eat it. I don't know if he likes turkey as much as chicken. Bob's recipe actually doesn't even mention how much *chicken* to use, but a roasting chicken is usually about 6 pounds. Your substitutes should come close. Keep in mind that turkey seems to have less fat than chicken, and supermarket ground turkey is aiming squarely for the "healthy eater" market - it's going to have only miniscule amounts of fat in it. Your ferrets *need* that fat, so you will need to find another source of animal fat for them. (Count that fat in the 6 lbs, too.) Even when I made "turkey gravy" by substituting a whole turkey for the whole chicken, the batch came out less fatty. Ground turkey won't even come close. My supermarket doesn't have a fat section, so I can't tell you where to get it. Perhaps you can ask the butcher for some of their trimmings. Also keep in mind that you can't feed ferrets on meat alone and expect them to be healthy. Meat-only diets are horrible for *any* animal. They also need the nutrients that can be found in the bone marrow and the organs. You won't really be able to replace the marrow (anybody got any ideas there?), but you can buy some packaged chicken livers or chicken giblets (or even turkey giblets) if you can find them. Or beef liver. Whatever you can find, toss it in there, but make sure it doesn't have any additives. (Count *these* in the 6 lbs, too.) Finally, you *can* do a little bit for the missing bone. Take a trip to your local health food/vitamin store or counter and pick up some pure bone meal powder. Solgar makes a good one that contains only bone meal and bone marrow meal powder with a little added B12. Toss a little of that in your mix. (Bones make up part of that 6 lbs, so yep, you guessed it - count this too. The only complication is that the dry powder will weigh MUCH less than live, hydrated bone, so what you really want to do is *subtract* some from that 6 lbs as "bone weight".) You might also consider using a pressure-cooker. I made my first batch of pressure-cooker gravy this weekend, and I have to say I like it. After 45 mins in the cooker with a 30 min cooldown, the chicken was just melting off the bone and the fat was rendered out nicely. I wanted to eat it right there and give the ferrets something else! (BTW, I barely covered the chicken with water - that turned out to be too much, but I don't know how much it affected the results.) I was able to blend up the chicken and small bones easily after that. I gave the larger bones another hour in the cooker with some of the leftover water, and they came out easily finger crushable. BTW, I didn't even cut up the chicken for this - just rinsed it off and threw it in there whole. Easy! Williams-Sonoma has a very nice electric pressure cooker for about $150 called the Nutritionist by Russell Hobbs. This is a nice big, heavy, quick heating cooker that seems to be much safer than many of the stovetop models - some of which cost even more! It even has browning, steaming, and low and high-pressure settings. And it holds a whole 6 lb chicken perfectly. :-) Lots of good gravy advice can be found here: http://www.trifl.org/gravy.shtml. BTW, Rocky might not like the turkey at first, but work with him a little bit. He will more than likely get used to it. Ours did when I tried it. roger & the wolverine wannabees missing bear [Posted in FML issue 4212]