My ferret ate some bread

Question
My two ferrets have the run of the house during the day, but one of them managed to find a small piece of bread somewhere (a mystery, as the kitchen is the one place they don't get to explore). He was chewing it when I realised and I don't think he managed to eat much - possibly a few grams. Is he going to be OK? I worry due to him being an obligate carnivore.

Answer
Hi John:

I definitely wouldn't worry about a little piece of bread, assuming that's what it was (and not say a bit of rat poison or similar object that would look like bread. You would know by now if that were the case, however. Even the 'kibble' food we feed our ferrets has corn, wheat, oats or some kind of 'non-meat' ingredients in them.  Kudos to you for recognizing how important it is that a ferret gets meat as his primary diet though!

My greatest concern here is that you have ferrets with free roam of the house - while you gone during the day (?) I presume?  It's just never a good idea to let ferrets roam freely without supervision because today it was only a bread crumb, but what will it be tomorrow?  The ferret I have now gets into places my previous five ferrets have NEVER ventured into! One day while in the kitchen I heard scratching around and lo and behold I looked up and saw his sweet little face looking back at me from the inside of the oven! Thank heavens I was not baking that day!! He has managed to climb to heights that there's no way he could have gotten down without assistance without getting seriously injured or killed. I've even heard of ferrets managing to dig through screen windows and be GONE by the time their owners get home from work!  I've heard of them getting toe nails stuck in loops of the carpet and ripping a toe completely off and nearly bleeding to death before parents came home, etc, etc....I could go on forever with horror stories of ferrets being left outside the safety of their cages while their owners are home to supervise them.

I do hope you will reconsider  and re-weigh the benefits of freedom and teaching them to just rest in the cage until you get home and THEN come out to play.

My best wishes,

Jacquie Rodgers