Q: "If you were forced by demons (CA F&G) to feed your ferrets ONLY one or two kibbled foods, which would they be?" A: Purina Fishin' Gestapo Kibbled Giblets and Iams Game Warden Kibble. Actually, I wouldn't. I buy as many of the higher quality kibbles as I can get and mix them together in a single container. Usually I cut the kibble 50% with Zupreme feline diet (formerly called Hill's Zupreme Carnivore Diet) before serving, but not always. My opinion is that individual meal quality is not as important as overall quality, providing the "poor" meals are infrequent and the ferret is healthy. Its sort of a common sense approach; a meal at MacDonalds is not that good, but it does no harm if it is infrequent and the person is healthy. If I had no choice, I would pick ferret or mink kibble over the cat kibbles; they may stink more but I think they have less grains included in the food because they are not technically kibbles but pelleted foods. They are still byproducts and waste, and heavily cooked, but at least the meat percentage is higher than in cat foods. Q:"Why grind the kibble? Why can't you just crunch it up? A: Because its required by the Grindmother of Ferrets... The purpose is not to disguise the flavor but the smell. The smaller the particles, the more surface area, the easier to inhale and the more smell. The object is to fool the ferret's olfactory imprinting. Q:"I heard some pet food is made from dead pets...." A: You never heard of recycling? There is *NO* law that forces pet food makers to tell you where the meat protein comes from, what species they were rendered from, the condition of the animals before rendering, nor the amount of cooking done to the food before packing. The only requirement is the product cannot be labeled beef if it is chicken. The law does say pet food makers can use 4-D animals (Dead, Dying, Disabled, Diseased), food rejected for human consumption, euthanized pets, road killed animals and even restaurant wastes, and they are not required to tell the consumer when included in pet food. Some cities attempt to recover some of their animal shelter costs by selling their euthanized animals to rendering companies, who skin them. cut off the meat, and toss the bones into a boiling vat to recover the gelatin, calcium salts and grease. The meat is dehydrated (sometimes after cooking), then ground to a powder to be sold as meat or protein meal, a common ingredient in cow, chicken and pet foods. Not only are city pound animals found in rendering plants, but also some animals that die in veterinary care end up there becuase there many not be a local incinerator, the dump is off limits, and/or the city may require the animals to be rendered or cremated and it is cheaper to render. Now, in all honesty, outside of the mental picture that a ferret might be eating the lost cat from down the street, the protein meal is not bad except for one small problem. Many times the animal was euthanized by injection, many killing agents do not break down at cooking temperatures, and the chemicals are carried to your pet in trace amounts. Add them to the unknown chemicals carried in by sick or dying animals and you can have an chemical brew of unknown composition, and the pet food makers have no obligation to inform you at all. Worry about BHA or BHT? How about lead, other heavy metals, antibiotics, growth stimulants, hormones, and pesticides? Pesticides enter the "kibble ecology" when treated plants and grains are fed to chickens and cows, the lead from cattle feeding on grass contaminated by car exhaust (leaded gas may be history, but the past fall-out is still there), and the antibiotics, hormones and growth stimulants are routinely fed to both chickens and cows. Many of these substances are *not* effected by cooking. BHA/BHT *might* be devils, but they are devils I know, not the unknown demons hiding behind "meat byproducts" and other collective ingredient terms. Q: "Why do you fed your ferrets brands of kibble that have BHA or BHT?" A: Because I love watching them at work with their tiny biochemistry sets. I didn't say I did. I said I mix all the high quality foods into a single container and mix it 50% with Zupreme feline diet. But lets talk about those two preservatives. All food will, in time, rot. Why does kibble not rot? Because it is only 1o% mositure, because it has so many grains compared to meat and fat, and because it is cooked at high enough temperatures to kill the bacteria then packaged in clean containers. Even so, it will still rot given enough time, especially when the fats or meats are not highly processed. Some add BHA/BHT to prevent the fats from becoming rancid, but these chemicals have been shown to cause problems in high dosages. Their toxicity in the trace amounts fed to animals in pet foods has *not* been remotely demonstrated in scientific experiments. Still, I am concerned. However, since I mix kibbles together and those containing the preservatives are in the minority, and since my ferret's normally eat maybe 70% non-kibbled food, I am not concerned enough to stop feeding them the foods. What concerns me more is the way kibble is made so you it won't rot without preservatives; they make it mostly grain and dehydrate it to the level of bone, which harms the teeth and the rest of the body. *MAYBE* my fert might get sick from preservatives, but for sure they will grind their teeth down to stubs on hard nonpreserved kibble. I'll take my chances with the first to eliminate the later. Bob C and 20 MO Carnivorous Clowns [Posted in FML issue 2344]