I guess it behooves me to always preface my posts with these statements: 1) Offering a natural diet or a kibble diet will always be the choice of the human, not the ferret. 2) Feeding naturally encompasses a wide variety of animal sources and forms, not just pieces of raw meat. 3) Your ferret is NOT on a Natural diet if it still has access to kibble and cooked or processed foods. 4) It is possible to improve upon the health of a ferret when improving the quality of the kibble, however OPTIMAL health is achieved when on a natural diet. Feeding ferrets Milk as their main staple, or Milk and honey while it may have been done by the uninformed - very quickly caused the observant ferret owner to change the ferret's diet or watch it die! This poor choice of diet staple was written about many ages ago as can be seen here: http://faculty.njcu.edu/fmoran/vol4ferret.htm#note252 It may be common practice to offer the hunting ferrets milk in ADDITION to the rabbit meat they ate as can be read from page 62 to 64 In Ferret Husbandry, Medicine and Surgery by John H. Lewington. The author notes the differences in texture, color and odor of the ferret deposits when fed milk and also notes the more modern ability to offer ferrets lactose free milk. This UK site offers a concise outline for feeding ferrets and discusses milk used in the diet: http://www.britishferretclub.co.uk/feedingferrets.htm the reader can see that milk is NOT a staple, but an additive or supplement. Another overseas site with an overview of feeding ferrets and a discussion of offering milk: <http://www.waffs.org.au/showcontent.toy?senid=10302&contentnid=14600> I offer my ferrets a drink of organic heavy cream on Sundays but dairy is NOT a staple of my ferret's diet! The splintery bone red-flag kibble feeders try to wave: Raw bones are actually soft and bendy, ferrets will easily chew and crunch these raw bones with no problems of splinters. It is the process of heating that causes bones to harden especially baking or broiling. Boiling bones until they crumble can offer a safe alternative to the dry heated bones, but boiling also removes all the nutrients from the bone! Ferret's teeth, jaws and tongue are perfectly designed to strip a raw bone of the flesh and then crush and crack the soft raw bone into sizes able to be swallowed. The digestive enzymes of the raw fed ferret are perfectly adapted to dissolve the eaten bones. Feeding whole prey with fur on also offers the ferret's digestive tract protection from any possible puncture or irritation. I've done a personal "study" of this very efficient process: http://media.putfile.com/Mouse-Scat-Dissection-070408 Maybe a review of some posts to the FML by the esteemed Bob Church will offer more insight than I can. I know that ferrets certainly choke on kibble and swallow many items that are NOT bones yet are indigestible and life threatening, and the majority of these ferrets would be found to be kibble fed, because the majority of ferrets ARE in fact kibble fed. Its just easier to envision a ferret choking on a bone than it is those cutesy stars and circles of kibble. <http://listserv.ferretmailinglist.org/SCRIPTS/WA-FERRET.EXE?S2=ferret-search&q=&s=(diet+101)&[log in to unmask]&a=&b> I've only had one instance of a ferret getting anything natural caught in its throat and that was Roman, my Path valley ferret who was still new to the natural diet and attempted to inhale an entire chunk of Cornish Game. He did this because another ferret had come near him and he decided to vacuum the food rather than walk off with it. He'd been chewing on it already and had it small enough to gulp, but not quite small enough to pass easily through his esophagus. He could still breathe, but he was definitely in discomfort until the piece managed to slip into his stomach. If you've ever swallowed a piece of bread on the wrong peristaltic wave, you'll likely feel the discomfort Roman felt. But it certainly was not life threatening, and he immediately learned to pick up his food instead of attempt to inhale it! The comparison of human dental condition to ferrets: Humans have different blood types and this variance in blood types also means differences in genetic qualities of body fluids, bone density and dental enamel. Ferrets, regardless of breeding, do NOT have different blood types, http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0887796303000877 http://www.vin.com/VINDBPub/SearchPB/Proceedings/PR05000/PR00298.htm so their body fluids will be similar from a Marshalls ferret to a Path Valley ferret to a Hat Trick ferret. This means the action of tartar, plaque and sugars will be similar on all ferret's teeth; as will the action of eating whole prey and raw meaty bones. For those kibble feeders taking affront that I insist ferrets on a natural diet will exhibit optimal health consider this: can a ferret survive on a kibble diet? Yes. Can a ferret thrive on a kibble diet? That depends upon your definition of thrive. Consider this comparison using fabric as an example. Fabric can be processed from unnatural items to create a shirt that is perfectly wearable. This to me equates to the cheap kibble diets often fed to ferrets; and offers a very standard health appearance and activity level of ferrets which is generally accepted as being O.K. A shirt blended from polyester and cotton costs slightly more and is just as wearable yet is considerably MORE comfortable than straight polyester. This equates to the better quality kibbles available for ferrets, and the subsequent improvement seen in their health and activity levels. But a shirt made from silk is 100% natural and while just as wearable as the previous fabrics it is far and away the most comfortable. This is the equivalent of the natural diet and offers significant improvements of health and activity in the ferret! For those who have started with ferrets and upgraded their kibble quality, one of the first things often commented is how they've noticed a big improvement in their ferrets. The next thing they do is share this improvement with other ferret folks. Why would this be any different for folks upgrading to a natural diet? [Posted in FML 6237]