Why Cat Foods Are Not Recommended For Your Ferret?

• A ferret’s digestive system is much shorter than a cat’s, which results in rapid food passage. A cat’s digestion is approximately 5 hours where a ferret’s is closer to 2 hours. Because of this, many cat foods don’t have ample time to break down in a ferrets system and valuable nutrients are lost.

• Ferrets require high amounts of meat protein and fat. Many ferret and cat diets use meals and grains to substitute for meat-based protein.

• Ferrets that are fed a premium ferret food will normally eat less and receive more nutritional value than other cat and ferret diets.

• We don’t feed dog food to cats or rabbit food to guinea pigs, so why feed a cat food to a ferret?

The key ingredients in any food for ferrets are fat and protein, specifically animal protein, since ferrets’ short digestive cycles prevent them from getting enough nutrition from vegetable proteins (approximately 3-4 hours!). Chicken, turkey, beef, and lamb are all fine; also most ferrets don’t like fish, and it may make their litter pan smell worse. Your ferret’s food needs to have 30-35% protein and 15-20% fat, and animal protein should be the first ingredient and at least two or three of the next few are recommended.

Unless your ferret is overweight, keep their bowl full and let them eat as much as they want.

Mike Steele
http://www.ferret.com/index.asp?srccode=EZART1