Writing again from Ethioipia. We make all our animals' food becasue there is no good or medium quality commercial food here. I'm reviewing all of the food, including, of course, the ferrets', and I'd like to get some advice on it. (Let's say, for now, that we don't discuss merits of live or raw food. E.g., there are plenty of parasites here.) We boil chicken and beef, about 2/3 to 1/3. Next shred/chop and grind it. We mix in some Gold Medal bone meal -- each ferret gets about 1 tablespoon per day. Then that gets bagged into units of about two fistfulls and frozen. There's always one bag in fridge and rest in freezer. To prepare each feeding, we boil water and add it to the chicken and beef in a dish. Then we take bits of raw beef that have fat attached to them, and boil that, Then mix it all up. The idea about the fat is to have 30% fat in the stew. So, some questions: o What else should be in the mix? Any other critiques? o Does it matter that the fat rises to the top of the stew and solidifies there? Not a crust over the whole dish, but lots of pieces. o Some of the ferret feces seem to be made up wholly of fat -- they are white and bloated. Is this important? I'm looking forward to your advice! [Posted in FML 7185]