Actually, all of the reasonably balanced food choices, including whole adult animals used raw and good kibbles, have downsides and upsides with no clear way for anyone to claim that any of the choices is best for ferrets. There simply is NOT yet research: physiological, microbiome population, and genetic to know what may be optimal for ferrets. So, there are opinions, but experiences are going to vary. Studies on domestic dogs found some surprises, rather than whole prey being optimal diets for dogs both genetic differences -- a DOZEN of those -- and multiple microbiome differences from wolves, indicating that a more omnivorous diet is optimal for domestic dogs, albeit with higher animal protein levels than turn out to be optimal for human health. You can find links in both the FML and FHL Archives to detailed information on these topics. Both FHL Archives have been having some problems recently so trying the FML one first makes sense. The link to it is in the header of each day's FML. No one has yet studied how domestic ferrets and polecats differ from each other in such regards. Yesterday a poster wrote: >Second ingredient is sweet potatoes. Third ingredient is peas like >you mentioned. Both are ingredients for Insulinoma. But the reality is that the dietary cause hypothesis for insulinoma is ONLY a hypothesis and still lacks supporting studies, nor are these foods among the high glycemic ones that I recall as listed in discussions of the hypothesis, though I am not going to bother right now to strain my eye looking up their glycemic index listings. This hypothesis was originally derived from another hypothesis, that one on diabetes in cats which has been quite strongly disproved in multiple studies. So, the hypothesis might pan out once carefully studied but may not. BTW, sweet potatoes are not potatoes. Sweet potatoes and yams are related to morning glories while potatoes are in Solanacea as are eggplant, nightshade, tobacco, tomato, etc. one thing people SHOULD remember about potatoes is to not let ferrets play with them. Their are two reasons. The first is blockage. The second is the neurotoxins found in parts of potatoes that go green. [Posted in FML 7964]