A healthy ferret should eat foods of animal origin, such as poultry, beef, turkey, horse meat, and sea fish. You can cook minced meat based on these products by adding various cereals to it. Water should always be present on the ferret's table.
The diet of a healthy home ferret should be as close as possible to that of a wild animal living in nature. As you know, the ferret is a predator and feeds on rats, mice, moles and rabbits. Sometimes it catches frogs, fish and birds.
Features of the digestive system
Ferrets have a small stomach, a short digestive tract, a poorly developed large intestine, and a vestige of the cecum. Food in the stomach of the animal is digested only 5-7 hours after admission, in addition, in the saliva of ferrets there is no amylase enzyme, which is involved in the breakdown of starch and sugar. For this reason, the diet of a healthy ferret should consist of foods that are well and quickly digestible, capable of providing the animal with the maximum amount of nutrients.
How and what to feed
The most physiologically suitable food is live mice, rats and day old chicks. You can give the slaughtered young of these animals, which immediately afterwards were immediately frozen. If there is no opportunity and desire to feed a pet with such food, it is replaced with offal - liver, heart, chicken heads, chicken, beef, turkey, horse meat and boneless sea fish - trout, cod, mackerel and flounder.
The so-called minced meat is also prepared on the basis of offal. For this, meat or fish broth is cooked and a mixture of different cereals is added there - rice, oatmeal, millet, buckwheat and the like. Depending on the base of the broth, add poultry, beef or fish.
Do not forget to add a vitamin and mineral supplement to the minced meat: today in specialized stores you can find vitamins specially developed for ferrets. The diet of a healthy ferret needs to be high in fat and protein and not include fiber. Fiber interferes with the absorption of nutrients in the intestines, so fruits and vegetables should not be in the animal's diet. You can't give the ferret egg white, you may experience allergies, but you can occasionally indulge in yolk. Small bird eggs can be fed raw.
From dairy products, it is allowed to treat the animal with a small amount of cottage cheese and a small piece of cheese. Do not give your ferret sweets, milk and lactic acid products, smoked meats, sausages, pork, chocolate, apples, carrots, nuts, plums, raisins, bananas, oatmeal and bran. As for water, the ferret drinks it a lot and often, so there should always be a bowl of fresh, clean, preferably filtered or spring water near its feeder.
