A few months ago I found a ferret, Tilly, in my back yard. She's old, has abnormal poops, but is otherwise healthy. I have her eating the ZuPreem 40/20 since she's allergic to corn and that's the only brand in the city that doesn't use it. She's done very well on this food, gaining a lot of weight (she was emaciated when I found her) and her hair is growing back but she still has the poop problem. A few days ago my vet told me to feed her some pumpkin or probiotic yogurt because he thought the problem might be her gut bacteria. 

Today I tried giving her these foods but I can't get her to eat either of them. However, she seems to be more tolerant of the pumpkin. I tried giving it to her straight from the can, heated up on a plate, and mixed with some mashed food all to no avail. I was able to get her to eat a tiny amount of it by slathering it over her favourite treat. That amount wasn't nearly as much as my vet told me to give her. My other ferret, Max, did eat the mash though so at least I can give it to him that way if he ever gets this problem. 

Does anyone know of any other tricks I can try? Right now my only plan is to just give it to her once a day on a treat until she'll eat it by itself.

I usually add the pure pumpkin to their chicken/duck soup.

I take a whole fryer chicken and put that into a cock pot.
Once it cook, let it cool.

Then I bring out a blender.

Blend up the chicken/skin with the chicken broth until its smooth.  No cook bones.
When I am blending up the chicken.  I add some pure pumpkin and heavy whipping cream (this helps put weight on).
Pour into plastic containers or ice cube trays....freeze.  Transfer your ice cubes into zip lock bags.  One cube is one 
serving.

I have six ferrets at home....this is why I cook up a whole chicken.

You can purchase some chicken broth baby food (no meat/veg baby food) add the pure pumpkin to the baby food.
Little bit warm water to make it soupy.

You might have to sit down with your ferret and feed them (fingers or a spoon) then move the bowl closer to ferret, so that they can eat the food. 

Good luck and I hope this helps

Thanks wenmister, I'll try the baby food with her. She's an old ferret so getting her to try new things is really difficult.

Just now I got an idea. I'll see if putting a few drops of ferretone in the pumpkin will work. She can't get enough of that stuff! I already gave her some today so I'll try it tomorrow.

If I do try the chicken soup I don't think I'll add any cream. I've had Tilly for almost a year now and she's gained a lot of weight (at least for her body size.) She has quite the belly on her now.

I'll try to post updates incase anyone wants them.

It worked!

I mixed some ferretone into the pumpkin, then drizzled more on top of it. It was an ungodly amount of ferretone but it worked! I'll try to ween her off of the extra ferretone so she doesn't get too much oil.

good job.  we mix in soups, too.  that's the great thing about sops. you can add different flavors or meds.   We only give pumpkin about every other week.

THE DOOKS OF HAZARD

I had issues getting mine to eat pumpkin too. They hate the duck soup to so I made a batch of my own with pureed chicken, liver, pedialyte, furovite, and the pumpkin. I was having to give it to 2 ill ferrets after we rescued them. They would not eat and we had to use syringes to get them to eat, drink, and meds. They hated us for a while but Trystan is doing great Wallie sadly was 7 yrs old when we rescued him and sadly crossed the rainbow bridge back in January. The funny thing about the mixture I made is my other ferrets liked it too minus the pumpkin.

FerretFuzz