Ferret has strange eating habits and sleeps alot!?!

Question
QUESTION: Hello

We recently bought an 8 month old male ferret, Oscar, who is an absolute sweetie! But within the 2 weeks we've had him we've noticed that he has strange eating habits, which is making us concerned about what to feed him on a regular basis.

He was given to us with james wellbeloved ferret feed, which his cagemate eats. In fact, his cagemate eats anything: cat food, mince, chicken etc etc, whereas oscar only seems to eat banana squished in cat milk, raw egg, chicken breast and beef. He might not even be eating the jwb feed, but they both have vitamin paste every day.

Not sure if it's related to his diet, but he spends a lot of time sleeping too. Whereas his cagemate, a similarly aged female, runs around the house for 3-4 hours every night, and about an hour in the morning, oscar seems to prefer having a cuddle on our laps than playing, then spends the rest of the evening asleep in my sock drawer. He'll do his little war dance, have a burrow, then go somewhere warm to sleep. Is this unusual behaviour for a young ferret?



ANSWER: Hello Tony,

Well let me start out by saying congratulations on the new addition, it's always so wonderful to get a new ferret to add to the family.

Now I see that you are feeding raw egg, chicken breast, beef, and mince. That's wonderful! Those are great foods to add to a ferrets diet and is great health wise for the ferrets. Do you ever feed the chicken breast raw?

But you should never feed banana to a ferret, ever. They are obligate carnivores and as such can not digest foods other than meat. They can pose major blockage hazards and are not good for the ferrets health in general. One of the reasons (other than blockages) is that they contain sugar, which is why your ferrets like it, but sugar is not good for ferrets and can lead to a disease called insulinoma. Milk is also something you don't want to give a ferret, especially on a daily basis.

Ferrets are finicky eaters and it can be hard to get them to accept new food as food. What food was he being fed from the place you got him? It could be that he just doesn't recognize your dry food as an actual food. Try mixing together what he was being fed before into what you want to feed him now and slowly transitioning him over.  
Something else to do if that doesn't seem to work is gently scruff the ferret and either wait till he yawns or pry his mouth open then dip your finger into the food (add water to the dry kibble and stir) and place a little bit onto his tongue and allow him to swallow it. This might take a few tries and seem slightly barbaric but in my experience it's a good way to get a finicky eater to eat. After they taste is a few times in most cases they like the taste and continue to eat.

Now on a side note have you ever considered feeding just a Raw Whole Diet, which consists of frozen raw whole mice, rats, chicks, some insects and other sources of meat. It's the healthiest choice in my opinion and when I saw that you were already feeding them meat I thought you might be willing to go all they way. It would require a lot of research but the benefits far outweigh the amount of work that needs to be put into doing.
If you are interested here are some sites that can help you.

http://www.exotichobbyist.com/NaturalFerret.html
http://www.veterinarypartner.com/Content.plx?P=A&A=479
http://everythingfert.proboards36.com/index.cgi?board=talk&action=display&thread (this is a forum that has great information about raw diets and a lot of people that feed that. You will have to create an account to read it, but it's worth it. And this page in particular talks about feeding raw as a whole diet or in addition to a dry food)


Now, since he is a young ferret he should be fairly active and the fact that he isn't has me a little worried. But from the small amount of information you gave me it doesn't sound like he's acting lethargic or sick. I would take him to a vet though and have him checked over to confirm if everything is alright because I have no experience with medical problems in ferret. But at that age they seem to be pretty active, though they do tend to sleep a lot, when they are out them place incessantly.  

I hope this helps a little and keep me updated!

Lindsey

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Thanks so much for your reply. Its of great help! We are so worried now though, about the banana thing! I thought it would be ok as i read upon a forum that this is something they can eat as a treat once a month. God, We do hope we haven't hurt them in any way. When we did feed them banana, it was just a teaspoon mashed up with about a cap ful of cat milk. We were aiming for it to be a treat but now we have learned of how bad it can be for them i think we will just stick with the ferretone paste and other such things that are good for them. Anyway! Update of how he is. We think we spoke to soon as since posting the question he has began to be a right little scatty fellow! running all over the rooms, dooking and doing the war dance with his new buddy tina. He still loves his cuddles too, and sometimes rests his little head on us for a break from hyperactive tina! His appetite has improved too - oscar now eats everything tina munches on (tina, in no way is a fussy eater apart from when its not cooked!) Before we got them both, oscar was just on james well beloved dry ferret food, and tina was on the same with iams kitten food. We thought we'd change their diet a little though by introducing meats, which now, thankfully, they have both taken to. We are not sure how they'd take to a raw diet, we have offered raw beef, chicken, liver, etc but unfortunately they won't touch it, or, stash it away into their bedding. Comes across as silly too, but i think we'd both be finicky about handling frozen mice or anything with the head/litte face still on! and the like too! - insects would be fine...also worms from the garden (heard they like to eat these) but then again, we do want what is best for our little babies so it is something we will indeed try, and if they do take to it, something we will have to get used to handling. We do have another problem though, which i hope you can help with - its getting to the stage where they are now wanting to be in all the time - they live in a 2 storey ferret hutch inside our garage, with an 8ft run attatched that has a digging pit, tree trunks and lots of other ferrety toys, but...they are in our home for at least 6 hours a day. When its time to put them back, we do feel terrible, as they claw! claw! claw! to get out and follow us back into our house! Obviously this is something we ignore but in doing so, we don't half feel bad. What are your suggestions for converting our little ferrets from garage kept ferrets to living in the same home we do 24/7 (both are litter trained yet we are in 2 minds about making a room inside our house just for them).

Answer
Hello again Tony,

I'm sure he's fine from the banana, it wasn't a lot and it was mashed. It's not your fault either, many ferret websites out there no little to nothing about ferret nutrition. They tell people it's ok to give fruit and veggies as a treat when it really isn't. Why give a ferret something that isn't good for them.
I fell into the same trap with my first ferret. I'm glad you're not giving any to them anymore and they'll be fine, you didn't harm them.
I'm really happy he seems to be better! And it's much wiser to ask the question and find out everything is fine than not ask and have things not be fine.

And you got a cuddlier, lucky you!

Have you ever heard/tried duck soup? If you haven't it's not actually made from duck, it's just a name it's acquired over time. It's a nutritious high protein food to be given daily and would be a great way to get them used to eating raw and double as a treat once they get used to it. (use same methods I mentioned for kibble, the scuffing)

There are many recipes out there and a lot of them will tell you about cooked chicken but you can use raw chicken instead. Then you can blend it together with some of their kibble, or high quality canned food, or raw eggs and the egg shells( high in calcium) and other types of meat.
Then once it's blended together you can put it in ice cube trays and freeze it. Then every cube is a serving for your ferret. Feeding it to them once a day is what I recommend.
Here's a site that has some great recipes for it, it's the same forum I sent you before, just a different section. You'll have to register, but it's worth it. It will actually go into detail about how to make duck soup, I just gave you a quick idea of what it was.

http://www.everythingfert.proboards36.com/index.cgi?board=Soup

Feeding the duck soup everyday and then just giving them dry food throughout the day would help their nutritional needs immensely.

To try and wean them into raw you could try adding some of that raw beef to their dry food and slowly increasing the amount over a few weeks. While raw beef is in no way a complete diet it does help get them used to the raw meat taste and helps with converting them over to a raw diet. Once they will eat raw food you can start giving them raw food daily. Since you aren't going to do a whole raw diet right away go back to giving them just kibble during the day but give them the option of some raw meat.
This is a diet that requires a lot of commitment, read about it, research it and then decide if you want to do it.

I completely understand about not wanting to feed a frozen mouse, it is a hard thing to do and not a little disturbing. You could give them raw chicken wings and necks in addition to the duck soup and dry. Those are great for them and they have the bones that will keep their teeth clean. Never give them a cooked bone though, that is when they splinter and can puncture something internally. Cooking makes them fragile, but non cooked raw chicken bones are fine for them to chew.

It's good you took out the Iams, though many people think it's a wonderful high quality food, it really isn't. The ingredients are rather poor.

Another reason I suggested you try raw is because I'm assuming you live somewhere in Europe and there are not many high quality dry foods available there. I know a lot of people that live in Europe tend to end up using a raw diet from lack of a quality dry food.

I looked at the ingredient list of james well beloved dry ferret food and while it is decent and seems the highest quality you can get, it still isn't that great. I am in no way trying to insult you, I've heard many people say how hard it is to get good food there, and you've found the best you could and have done a great thing by feeding meat in Addison to it.
There isn't much meat in the food you're feeding and typically you want the first ingredient to be a whole meat such as just chicken, or just turkey. With what you are feeding it's chicken meat meal.
And feeding them cooked meats as I said before is still wonderful, and I'm so happy you were and are doing that.

Let me say what you have set up for your ferrets in the garage sounds wonderful. I bet they just love the digging pit.

I know a lot of people have a room inside their house just for the ferrets. The results they have had are wonderful and the ferrets love it.

Honestly I don't think they would be much adjusting on the part of the ferrets. They love new things and will spend a day or two investigating every nook and cranny of the new room/house, and seeing what they can get into. They also might miss the litter boxes because they are in a new place. You  might want to have more litter boxes because if it's too far away to the newest litter box the ferret isn't even going to bother.

For awhile I would stay in the room with them when they are out and watch what they get into to better help ferret proof the room to make it suitable for them to be in 24/7.

Does the room have carpeting? You might find that the ferret will dig at the carpeting in front of the door, as they are burrowing creatures it's in their nature.

You could also make them free range ferrets inside the house, though that takes a lot, let me say again, a lot of ferret proofing, because as you know they will get into everything you don't think they can or will. I would start out with just one ferret room and see how you like it and how they react, judge whether or not you want to do more from that. I'm not really sure what else I can say about bringing them in the house and keeping them there. If you have more questions just ask but for now I'll leave it what I just wrote.

Let me say that you are both wonderful ferret parents, you care so much and it really makes me happy to see people like you trying to do the best for their ferrets. I wish more people were like you and asked questions, researched and tried their hardest.

Lindsey