Many ferret references will tell you *not* to fed your ferret bones because they will choke on them. I have personally challenged FMLers to report any ferret death from eating a bone. I got a single answer, describing a single incident. The ferret reportedly bled to death from cuts to the inside of the esophagus, stomach and intestines caused by the passage of a sliver of bone. Do the following experiment. Break a piece of chicken or turkey bone so you have as sharp an edge as possible. File it sharper if you wish. Buy intestines from the local butcher; chicken will do fine. Cut a section of the intestines open and lay it flat. Now, using the bone, try to cut the intestine. If the intestine is against a hard surface, the bone is sharp, and you push real hard, you *can* cut it. However, in the living body, intestines are not against hard surfaces and bone splinters are not being dug into their surfaces with human upper-body strength. Further, irritated intestines produce lots of slimy thick mucous. Even if the bone were sharp, it would glide down on a coat of slick mucoid slime. Yeech. The incident is all the more improbable because stomach acids *disolve* bone, rounding off all exposed and sharp edges, (as do intestinal enzymes to some extent). Could it happen? Well, maybe if the ferret was very ill from something else, such as a bacterial overgrowth or ECE. Was the person wrong? I think they honestly reported what they were told by their vet. I think the vet was wrong, saw internal bleeding (probably from a toxin or bacteria), and simply blamed it on the small fragment of bone. Ferrets are domesticated varities of polecat, with millions of years of evolutionary design geared towards the eating of bone. Bone is a natural and important part of a carnivore's diet, and *anyone* who tells you different is not very well educated in the matter. Pick up a copy of any number of professional journals geared toward the diets of animals in zoos, and you will find a strong tendency towards providing zoo animals with as natural a diet as possible. I have several articles that actively promote the inclusion of bone in carnivore diets. Aanimals eating fresh meat and bone tend to breed better, are happier and are healthier than animals eating more artifical diets. Can a ferret choke on a bone fragment? Sure can, but there are far more reports of ferrets choking on bits of kibble. Besides, choking is a far cry from dying; I have choked hundreds of times in my life, most recently in Seattle while sipping a bottle of "Fat Weasel Ale," yet I live. Don't be sad. Doesn't kibble contain bone meal? Some do. Most don't. Most supply the calcium requirement by adding cheaper calcium carbonate to the kibble mix. But bone is made of hydrated calcium phosphates, so you have to add phosphoric acid as well. The problem is, if calcium is out of proportion to phosphorus, the body will actually suck bone from the skeleton to balance them out. To get away from this problem, some kibbles use bone meal, but you have to be careful of quality. What is the difference between bone, bomemeal and calcium carbonate? When you feed a ferret calcium carbonate plus phosphoric acid, both chemicals will form ionic (charged) molecules that are absorbed into the blood. Calcium carbonate breaks into both negative carbonate ions and positive calcium ions in body liquids, especially in stomach acid. In the presence of carbonate ions, the phosphoric acid will give up hydrogen, leaving phosphate ions behind. The hydrogen reacts with carbonate, forming water and carbon dioxide. That leaves two ions, the calcium and the phosphate. These are very important to the body for many reasons besides having a hard head. Without calcium and phosphate ions, muscles wouldn't work, nerves wouldn't fire, and your body couldn't regulate the acidity of your blood, not to mention build bone. If the calcium carbonate to phosphoric acid ratio is not perfectly balanced, the excess chemical can make the blood either acidic or alkaline. To counteract this problem, the body will disolve its own bone to buffer the blood and neutralize the imbalance. Eating bonemeal or bone is similar, except you skip the first part of the process--the chemical reaction where you eliminate the carbonate and hydrogen ions--and you don't have to worry about imbalances because bone is already perfectly balanced. Bone is chiefly composed of a substance called "hydroxyapitite," which is a hydrated form of calcium phosphate (hydrated means water is incorporated into the molecule, which, like plaster, makes the final crystaline structure stronger and more rigid. Hydroxyapitite is frequently called bone or calcium salts). The difference between bone and calcium carbonate plus phosphoric acid is that bone has far more nutrients than the two chemicals, which include lipids, vitamins, proteins, and iron. These nutrients are so complete that primary carnivores can survive on nothing but a diet of fresh bone. Eat nothing but calcium carbonate plus phosphoric acid, and your ferret will die. What whats the difference between bone and bonemeal? If the bonemeal is for human or animal consumption, it has been steam heated. It is about 65-75% calcium salts with a maximum of 2% ammonia. If used as fertilizer, then the calcium salts can drop down to 40-55%, and it contains 4-5% ammonia and 20-25% phosphoric acid. So don't feed your ferrets fertilizer-grade bonemeal, even if it is cheap. The steaming process, like cooking, can break proteins and lipids apart, destroying their nutritive value. Also, bonemeal has had some of the natural oils and fats removed during processing, which lowers the fat-soluble vitamin content. Although a ferret could live on a diet of bone, it would not be able to do so eating nothing but commerical bonemeal. By the way. Most bonemeal for human consumption comes from South American cows because the bone has lower levels of lead than the bones of cows in the USA. Lead, like most heavy metals, is incorporated into bone and remains there for the life of the animal. USA cows ingest a high amount of lead from the environment. Leaded gas is the chief culprit; the lead is still in the soil that grows the grass and grains that feed the cattle. In South America, with fewer roads and lots fewer cars, the soil lead levels are much lower, and the bonemeal is safe for human use. Most bonemeal for animal feed comes from the good ol' USA. Surprised? Bob C and 20 MO Ferting Fools. [Posted in FML issue 2315]