Edward have you watched ferrets kill the live prey or are you just going on a supposition? I have seen ferrets kill live prey and proceed to eat them and the majority of the time they do not eat the stomach or intestines. As a matter of fact the larger the prey, the larger the stomach and longer the intestinal tract, the less likely it is the ferret consumes those innards. Communications with people that routinely offer their ferrets whole rabbits reveals that very often the stomach and intestines remain untouched. Ferrets will happily eat the liver, the heart, the lungs even the kidneys but many of them will not touch the stomach or the intestines. Some ferrets of course do eat the entire animal but the majority of them are selective about what they eat and usually what gets left behind uneaten is the digestive tract. This could very well be mother nature's way of reducing parasite loads in the predator. Polecats in the wild eat prey according to seasonal abundance. A study of polecats in the marshes of France showed frogs being a large part of the diet as well as bank voles. Frogs guts don't contain plant matter and bank voles often eat insects and invertebrates. Keeping this in mind even were ferrets to eat the guts of their prey, the digesta within the intestinal tract is not equal to 5% of the prey's bodyweight and certainly is not 5% of the polecat's or ferret's total dietary intake. >Do we conclude therefore that the ferret cannot benefit from consuming >herbivorous digest, especially when one pulls up the ancient adage >that the portal to the small intestine at the duodenum is lacking a >defined, ruminant fermentation sack, the vestigial cecum?" It is not an "ancient adage" that the ferret is lacking a caecum, it is an anatomical fact. You cannot surmise that because the prey animal chewed the plants and that the plant matter is in various stages of digestion that this automatically equates to the ferret being able to assimilate such plant matter. Regardless of which animal is digesting it, the plant matter still requires specific enzymes to be broken down; the ferret lacks such digestive enzymes. The speed with which digesta moves through the ferrets digestive tract also precludes beneficial breakdown in a timely fashion of such plant matter. In other words to digest plant matter it takes specific enzymes and "x"- amount of time to process; things which the ferret cannot offer in order to gain significant nutrients from plant matter. You claim the ferret can, to a limited extent, eat like an elephant or a horse; and you claim, "Ferrets benefit mightily from vegetables, fruits, and some other so-called prohibited food groups, but not in the normal cellulose compounded glucose structures of natural plant growth." Apparently as a result of your foundation's exclusive process of : "Particle Micro-miniaturization and Hyper-thermal Extraction". Which to me, sounds simply like grinding and cooking the plants. You must've forgotten a communication years ago, in 2001, on the FHL where you inquired about the ferrets digestive abilities: http://ferrethealth.org/archive/YG2414 Dr. Tom Willard offered a rather informative answer illustrating the reasons why plant matter does not benefit the ferret and should not be considered a significant source of nutrients for the ferret. Cheers, Kim please visit : for ferret help and info: http://holisticferret.proboards80.com/index.cgi http://ferretopia.proboards51.com/index.cgi yahoo groups Natural Ferrets for fun: www.vanityferret.com [Posted in FML 6070]