FOODS AND FEEDING: HAND-FEEDING: Feeding a sick ferret can be difficult, and I personally dislike the use of syringes for feeding because of the danger of aspiration and subsequent pneumonia. In short term cases, just dipping your finger in the food and letting the ferret lick it off is sufficient. A couple of dips and licks, each one getting closer to the food dish, and soon the ferret is eating on their own. In long-term cases, I use a combination of plastic spoons and large plastic and small glass medicine droppers to administer food to a weak ferret. I have found plastic spoons FAR superior to metal spoons for feeding ferrets. I look for plastic spoons with a deep and narrow bowl, but any plastic spoon is better than a metal one. Food cools faster in a metal spoon compared to a plastic one, lessening the aroma and taste. Many ferrets dislike the touch of metal on teeth and old ferrets may have worn teeth, especially their canines, that may be sensitive to metal, causing discomfort and reducing the ferret's desire to eat. For weaker ferrets that are still trying to eat but can't manage the spoon, I use a large plastic medicine dropper that holds approximately a teaspoon of liquid food (about 5 cc). I just slowly squeeze the bulb and let the ferret lick the food from the tip. For ferrets that can't manage that, I drop down to the smaller glass medicine dropper, and with the ferret in a normal eating position, drop a drip on the tongue just past the incisors. Sometimes I just dip the end of my finger into the food and rub it off on the ferret's tongue or teeth. Here is the blunt truth; if a ferret is too weak to eat from a medicine dropper, using a syringe to push food into the mouth is downright dangerous. If the ferret has a chance of recovery and needs to eat but can't for one reason or another, I suggest the possibility of using a feeding tube -- inserted by a vet -- to decrease the chance of food aspiration. If your ferret aspirates food and gets pneumonia, their chances of survival are severely limited. You may not even be able to detect aspiration pneumonia in your ferret and just notice they are weakening or dying. My recommendation is to start with plastic spoons, move to large plastic medicine droppers, then small glass medicine droppers, and if they don't work, forget the syringes and have your vet insert a feeding tube. Make sure you only feed fresh food. Reheating left over chicken baby food is potentially dangerous because it is likely that the ferret's oral bacteria contaminated the food when feeding it to them the first time, and the bacteria has had time to grow since. This is especially true if feeding baby chicken and only re-warming between feedings; the food and warmth beg bacteria to grow. Weakened ferrets generally have suppressed immune systems, and it would be a shame for a ferret to survive an expensive life-threatening injury only to die from a bacterial infection contracted from eating a few cents worth of contaminated food. If you are worried about wasting food (store-bought baby food IS expensive), use the "two-spoon system"; use a clean spoon to dole out small amounts of the food from the original container as needed, and a second spoon to feed the ferret. What the ferret doesn't eat should be discarded. Make sure to heat the food. Warm food has a stronger smell, helping to entice a ferret to eat by helping to stimulate hunger. Also, warmed food doesn't drop the ferret's body core temperature as much, and while the drop may be minor, the ferret can use every calorie saved for recovery. Bob C [Posted in FML issue 4405]