Princess was given up to us in a rather tragic state. She was bored, in her small empty cage with no toy or beds, alone, and very skinny. She was dropped off with all her stuff which included her cage, bowl, bottle and some cheap dry cat food. Normally that would be straight in the bin, but we decided to keep it until she settled in. She was a god handler but that was more chance than anything else since she Lived in that cage with no contact. So, we gave her some toys and actual bedding, and got started with her quarantine, worming etc.
After a couple of days, we figured out why she was so skinny, and it wasn’t anything to do with her health or even her bored state of mind. Princess wasn’t eating that food. Who knows how long she’d been off it, if she’d ever ate it. She wouldn’t eat mince, or ferret kibbles, or tinned food, or chicken, or egg, or turkey, or lamb, or goose, or ….
We tried everything and eventually we got her eating pigeon. I could hear the angel choir. This isn’t even an unusual thing when you’re dealing with rescues. Eating problems are really common, sometimes it’s because they’re lonely or scared but often it’s just a case of they don’t know it’s food.
It’s a sad thing to say but most people who breed ferrets shouldn’t be, they do it to bring their jills out, don’t always feed them right and sell to people who don’t know what they’re doing: $$$$$$$$$$
It’s usually these ferrets that we’ve seen in rescue, sometimes an owner just can’t keep them any longer but it’s much more common for someone to say; they’re just not what I thought they were, they take too much work, they smell, they bite. I suppose that it is the same story in rescue no matter what animal you are taking in.
Ferrets can be really finicky eaters in taste and texture. You see it in rescue work but you’re also really likely to see it if you decide to switch from a kibble diet to a franken-prey raw diet (that is a raw diet made up from a bit of this and a bit of that). You’ll measure out a perfectly balanced meal and they won’t eat the kidney. Short term that’s ok but they’ll keep doing it. Eventually it is dangerous. That’s why when we switched to fully raw we fed a mix of minces, they couldn’t be picky 😉
They pick up this selective eating when they’re kits. If a ferret doesn’t see something as food when they’re young they just won’t eat it. This can be as extreme as Princess or it can be like Dylan, who would only eat kibble and egg, not even cooked meat, or they might only eat one type of kibble like Ruby, or they might only eat whole prey in the fur/feathers like another rescue Pippa when she first arrived, or Dutch who wouldn’t eat bone, or like a lady who I was speaking to lately ferrets who would only eat meat if it was skinned and butchered into little bits, no mince.
This can be a really big problem if they have to change diet for medical reasons or if your ferret is in the vets or lost and picked up. In these situations, your ferret needs to eat no matter what it is. It would destroy me if my furbaby escaped and was safe but the person who had him fed cat meat or kibble and he starved himself like Princess. And if one thing is true it is that our kits are still our furbabies no matter where they go or how old they get.
For this reason, I spend months collecting minces, meat chunks, whole prey of different sources, researching kibbles and making and buying lists of good and mediocre ones, and looking at different types of wet cat meat too. I already have 3 kibbles, wet food and 9 different types of meat in stock! That’s us barely started. If you’re looking to breed or buying a kit from elsewhere, please make sure you give a variety of texture in their food. Get that foundation of food nice and wide so you never have to worry about them not eating in an emergency situation. And tell the breeder, encourage them to be a better breeder and hold them to higher standards. People only think they can breed kits on the cheap with no effort because people overlook the low standards they set.
Until next time! xx