The length and quality of your ferret’s life is largely determined by the diet it eats. In general, low fiber and high protein content with a decent mix of fats and carbohydrates are crucial to ensuring your ferret experiences no health problems and a short life span. With far more ferret foods on the market than were available in the past, here are some guidelines for selecting the best food to ensure your ferret remains healthy and has a very long life.
Baby ferrets’ diets generally require foods consisting of a mixture of 35% to 40% protein, 18% to 30% fat, 2% fiber, and 21% amino acids to survive into adulthood. As you no doubt know, not all ferret foods are created equal. As such, quality and taste are also critical. Even the best food that rigorously meets these specifications is useless if your ferret doesn’t like the taste, refuses to eat, and starves as a result, which is certainly not what you want.
Two meals a day are required for your ferret to remain in optimal health. Fortunately, ferrets’ diets require fairly low amounts of food, as their bodies are quite small. If you are unsure when your ferret prefers to eat, opt for dry rather than wet food as it can stay in the cage throughout the day without spoiling. Wet food, on the other hand, can go bad and unhealthy in as little as forty minutes. Also, since water is also important to any ferret’s diet, make sure your plate or bottle is kept full and clean.
Snacks and treats are a great way to train a ferret. Excellent options for such rewards include cooked meats and eggs. Avoid sugars at all costs, as they can lead to nutritional problems like ferret insulinoma, hypoglycemia, and even obesity. Your ferret can experience the same nutritional problems as humans who consume too much sugar. Vegetables, especially onions, are poisonous to ferrets’ diets and should also be avoided.
Keeping your ferret comfortable, healthy, and happy is the best way to ensure its long life. A quality ferret diet is one of the best means of ensuring this, as a ferret free from health problems is likely to be happier.