Food?

Question
I am a senior in high school, and I'm doing my senior project on healthy food for dogs, and other pets with paws... :D. But my question for my project is... Do you by chance know any ingredients in ferrets treats, food, or other things that they may eat, that can be put into food that can be healthy for the pets with paws?


Answer
Hi Andrea:

Excellent project!  Ferret nutrition is something that many ferret owners really are not informed on. Unfortunately their ferrets pay the ultimate price in shorter lives, sometimes living their whole lives in malnutrition or a state of starvation without the owner even knowing!

Ferrets are what is called "obligate carnivores", in other words, their digestive systems are made to digest ONLY meat and meat products.  Any vegetables, fruit or their byproducts (such as soy bean oil, etc) just isn't digested by a ferret - it just passes thru unused.

When choosing a ferret food, it is imperative that FOUR of the first FIVE ingredients are meat (usually chicken, but sometimes turkey or fish) in some form.  A good food for a ferret would read like this for the first five ingredients:
Chicken, chicken byproducts, chicken digest, chicken broth, brown rice........etc.   When other things like corn meal or soy protein are in the first five ingredients, the protein level (which most ferret owners SHOULD know to look for) have actually been 'artificiallly boosted' with protein sources that ferrets cannot even use....i.e: example is Natural Gold, by Pretty Pets, which boasts a 50% protein level...wasted money (it's VERY expensive and unfortunately a lot of ferret lovers fall for the 50% protein level).

Here's a great link of all kinds of ferret foods and you can see how the various food makers manipulate the ingredients - and with the above information YOU will know which are the ones that are best.  :-)

http://www.ohioferret.org/INFO/nutri.asp

Best of luck in your project!
Jacquie Rodgers
Ferret Guru - All Experts.com