What is an Obligate Carnivore?
Ferrets, being obligate carnivores, are designed to eat whole, small prey animals including: small to medium-sized mammals, birds, eggs,frogs, crustaceans, fish, worms, and insects. That is what they do and what they would eat in the wild. It is also what wild polecats --Ancestor of the ferret-- eat in the wild. It is biologically essential for obligate carnivores to consume a natural diet in order for them to thrive and live a long healthy life. Not only is it good for their overall health, a ferret in particular, who is on a natural diet is also less likely to get diseases* compared to if it were on a kibble based diet. Obligate carnivores are strict meat eaters.
Their body is designed to eat only meat. Though they can consume plant matter or carbs found in kibble, their bodies cannot properly digest it like herbivores or omnivores can, and they certainly cannot metabolise the nutrients as efficiently as they can with meat so their little organs have to work overtime to produce any enzymes needed for the digestion. There are some things that cannot be found in plants, that they need to eat from meat, Taurine for example. Their bodies cannot produce it, so they require it in their diet. Its essential. A deficiency in taurine may cause blindness among other things. I have a better explanation on my article on Cooked Meat in regards to nutrient loss in cooked meat etc.
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*Diseases caused by diet and nutrition. I am not implying that an animal is safe from X diseases. Consuming inappropriate diets will only speed up the process of diseases such as insulinoma.
The diet of choice in which ferrets are designed to handle is completely raw meat, or even whole prey— even combination of the two.
This is a snippet from the following article.
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