Trying to decide whether to switch ferrets to all natural raw diet

Question

Dont care about cost, convenience, or yuck factor. Only their health and safety. They are 4 and a half and one may have adrenal disease, but will get the surgery if so. on an all natural forum it seemed the raw fed ferrets lived MUCH longer than kibble fed ferrets. Please tell me your experiances with it, any issues, and especially how long your B.A.R.F. fed ferrets have lived and exactly what you feed. Thanx!

Answer 1

I know you've been thinking about this and doing as much research as you can. I'm including a few links you might find relevant, it's a lot of reading but should give you a pretty balanced picture on the ferret nutrition issue.

One thing is I am only posting links from ferret 'experts', basically DVM's that are specialized in ferrets or PhD's that have also specialized in them. Collectively these people do not agree on what diet is best for a ferret, some believe a good quality high protein low carb kibble and some believe a 'natural' diet is best. If these great minds don't agree it's to be expected that we as ferret owners will not as well. The best you can do is research both sides of it and decide what is best for you and your ferrets, there is no right answer.

Finally in regard to lifespan, the oldest ferret on record lived 14 years, average used to be 9-11 years but has been drastically reduced over the years. It truly is impossible to know what effect diet has on that.

All of my current ferrets eat a good quality diet however all but one has health issues. The one that lived the longest was actually many years ago he lived to be around 11 and he lived on fairly low quality (by todays standards) kitten food with treats of raisins and cheerios everyday. Back then it was actually recommended to give it to them as people had not done the research they have now. Why did he live longer? I can't say for sure, breeding probably had a great deal to do with it. He was from a mass breeder (RCF - Real Canadian Ferrets) but back then ferrets were not as popular and so the breeding lines were still healthier, as a general rule as the popularity of a pet rises the health goes down as they are bred faster and put to store quicker. He was 9 weeks when I adopted him and that was his first day in store, he was neutered at 7weeks (still too young but better than the current 4 weeks).

Out of my currents I have one from a small, very reputable breeder, he is only 17 weeks right now and I have a record of his geneology going back 5 generations (the breeder has it going back further). He is unaltered and will not be until he is at least 1 year old so he has gone through one complete rut cycle. His biological family is on a natural diet and they typically live around 8 years, we are hoping to get that to 10.

Adrenal disease is not believed to have a dietary cause at all but rather some trends are emerging that it may be more environmental than anything else. Currently we do not know but Dr. Bob Church a zooarchealolgist and ferret fanatic is doing some fantastic studies on ferrets around the world in an effort to find the cause. This may actually be the first real information we as a community receive in regards to the causes of adrenal. He has released snippits of information but it will probably be another year or two until we hear more. http://ferretopia.proboards51.com/index....

I hope this helps you out a bit and you find some answers in your research.