fat, flubby ferret

Question
Hello! I went through all of your questions to make sure this wasn't asked before, but I only saw underweight ferret questions. So sorry if this is a repeat!

My sister watched my two ferrets for a few weeks while I moved into a new place (ferretfied it) and settled in my job. I picked up Philip and Darien and Philip is now preeeeetty fat. Darien seems underweight compared to him!

I feed them 8in1 although I just read that that isn't good food either (and I thought I did right by ditching Marshalls!), so I am going to try out that Evo ferret food.

Main question - how can I get Phil to lose some weight? I'm worried about his health and lack of inactivity. Plus, if he's a sloth, he's cutting back on Darien's play time with him.

They are 3 years old. Oh! and Phil will only eat bits of bananas as treats outside of his regular food. Nothing else (unless you count ferretone)

thank you!

Answer
Since I can't see your ferret, I can't say for sure if he even is overweight...ferrets can have a pretty wide range of healthy weights; also, it could just be his fur. Your best bet, if you are concerned about his weight, is to have your vet tell you if he is indeed overweight and what you can do about it. Since there are two ferrets, trying to put one and not the other on a diet is really hard.

As far as the food you're feeding them, I don't know where you read that 8 in 1 is bad, but it's actually one of the better ferret food choices. I use it, it's fine. Also, you shouldn't be feeding your ferrets anything besides ferret food and ferret specific treats...even bananas are bad, since they have sugar and ferrets just aren't well suited to digest fruits and veggies very well.