# Ferret food?



## phoenix1964 (Jan 23, 2014)

Hi, we have had some fun feeding our girl. She got very sick and we had to give her A/D. She loved it! She got better and then we started to switch her to M/D, another vet recommended food, she loved it and switched not trouble.we made sure to go nice and slow. The vet would like to see her ona good quality kitten kibble so she doesn't get too fat. After reading over the ferret food I see that ground corn is the second ingredient . The other ingredients sound good though. Crude protein is 38%, crude fat is 22%,crude fibre is 3.5%.
It is Living World extrusions.
I also love the kibble size, it is nice and small


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## Lilysmommy (Jan 7, 2009)

Unless you have a very active runner, 22% fat is going to be too high. It's best to aim for around 15% (or lower) for most hedgehogs. Babies can do okay with a bit extra fat for growing, but generally that's still in the 15-20% range. Higher than that is usually reserved as needed for runners or nursing mothers. 38% protein is a tad on the high side too, though not super terrible. If you wanted, you could still feed it in a mix with something that has 15% or less fat and a lower protein percentage, to balance out the overall mix, but you'd want to make sure she was eating both kibble, not just the fattier one.


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## phoenix1964 (Jan 23, 2014)

She is about 10 weeks old, moderately active with a nice figure that tends towards traditional hedgie shape. She is not that interested in dry food at all. What would you recommend for wet food? I don't want to risk a hunger strike. Other than cauliflower she is not interested in treats. We had a rough start with her!


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## jack.torry (Feb 12, 2014)

I have a ferret myself at home, and I use Marshalls Premium Ferret Diet. I stuck with what the store was feeding her, just so that she didn't have to go through a change. My vet suggested that I stay with that food.​


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## Lilysmommy (Jan 7, 2009)

You could give it a try and see how she does on it. I would just watch her weight carefully, from your description of her, it sounds like it would be too high of fat for her. But you could try it! If you do though, I'd continue to offer other, lower fat foods, and see if you can find one that she likes that you can either mix in with it or replace it with if she starts gaining too much weight.

If you don't want to try any other dry foods, a lot of the recommended brands for dry food have wet/canned food as well. You'll just want to make sure you calculate the dry mass percentage for protein & fat. The protein is less of a concern with wet food since there's quite a bit of added moisture with it - and lack of moisture is the concern with dry food that's high in protein. But you'd still want to look for something under 20% fat, IMO. You can see how to calculate DMB here - http://www.hedgehogcentral.com/forums/12-diet-nutrition/19-soft-food-recommendations.html


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