Is it healthier to do this?
What would be a good way to go about raw diets and what food would it consist of?

It's much healthier if you keep it balanced.

The food itself is any raw meat you can get a hold of. I personally feed duck, pork, rabbit, chicken, beef, chicken, and turkey. I also throw in some sashimi grade tuna or wild caught salmon a couple of times a month. Some people also feed raw eggs but those can only be given once a week.

The proper balance can be achieved over time (most people do it on a weekly basis). It consists of 4 bone-in meal days (think chicken bones), 2 boneless days, and one organ day (liver, brains, kidney, spleen, intestines... All of the nasty stuff can be fed).

As for switching over, you should check out Holistic Ferret to get a better idea on how to do it. There are many ways to switch and every ferret has a preference as to how they switch. My first ferret was a kit so all I had to do was throw the food in his cage and he started chomping down on it. For my other ferret though, I had to hand feed him raw meat soup (and eventually thick mush) until he realized that meat was yummy.

Is it healthier to do this?

Yes, if you feed the right requirements.

 

I feel it is healthier to feed raw than kibble, but there are advocates on both sides of the argument.
 
There are 3 types of raw feeding:
Whole Prey - feeding whole mice, chicks, etc.  These can be fed live, or frozen.
RMB - feeding meat/organs/bones in the correct proportions for a healthy diet.  You'd give chicken nexks one day, liver and heart the next day, wings and thighs another day.  (etc etc etc)
Commercial Raw:  Feeding raw food that has been commercially prepared to meet the right proportions.  Stella and Chewy's, Wysong, ZiwiPeak, etc.
 
I feed commercial raw.  I like the fluffiness of their coats, and their activity level.  For the ones which have insulinoma, their quality of life has greatly increased on the raw diet.

Snapper laid out the different types of raw/natural diets for you. I just wanted to add that commercial raw diets come in two forms:
 
Freezedried-If you feel more comfortable feeding a dry diet that can be left out for longer periods of time. The texture is also more similar to dry kibble (though not as hard on the teeth) and ferrets seem to be more receptive to this. You can always "reconstitute" this food with water or low sodium chicken broth (even chicken babyfood) to make it into a soup, which is generally well recieved by ferrets. Caseyshiddenpantry (in Snapper's signature) has a great variety of freeze-dried raw diets. If you decide to go this route I'd definitly check out her store.
 
Frozen-Frozen raw ground meat/bone/organ/and a smidge of veggie matter. This is good if you'd like to feed raw but you'd like to have everything balanced out for you instead of having to do it yourself.
 
A note, for both commercial raw frozen AND raw freezedried diets you need to provide a variety of different flavors. So be sure to rotate not just the flavors you feed, but also the brands. I like the following frozen raw diet brands/flavors:
 
Nature's Variety Raw Frozen Medallions
Organic Chicken
Buffalo
Venison
Rabbit
Beef
Lamb
 
Primal Raw Frozen Feline Formulas (Nuggets)
 
Pheasent
Chicken and Salmon
 
Stella and Chewy's Frozen Raw Patties
 
Duck Duck Goose
 
Now unfoutunately Snapper doesn't carry these frozen diets, so if these interest you try going to Primal, Stella and Chewy's, or Nature's Variety's websites and you should be able to locate a local provider, such as an all natural pet botique. These foods are also for sale online. Shop around for the best deals on shipping, etc.
 
If whole prey tickles your fancy then rodentpro.com is an excellet provider of a wide variety of prey animals (mice, rats, quail, chicks, rabbit, guinea pig) and a wide variety of ages (from pinkies and chicks to large and x-large adults) these are frozen thawed and shipped to your door in a carbord box with dry ice to keep things frozen. There are other whole prey providers out there such as Prey4Pets and TheBigCheese (based out of Dallas, TX) but Rodentpro is my favorite.
 
As snapper mentioned you can feed whole prey live or frozen. Live prey can be purchased from a local petshop (but is usually pretty expensive), or you can breed your own live prey. Ferrets, once they know what they are doing, are very fast and efficient hunters. The prey does not suffer for long before it passes on. Personally I have objections to this feeding method (live) for several reasons, but if its the right choice for you and your fuzzies then do what you feel is best.
 
For raw diets based on the whole prey model (RMBs) a local grocery store, walmart, costco, sams club, etc or even a private butcher are all great places to purchase the ingredients needed to formulate this diet. Organ meat is an important part of this diet, and you can't always find a good variety of organ meats locally, so you may have to order organs online and have them shipped to your door frozen (like rodentpro does). I like hare today, gone tommorow because they have a wide variety of organs for sale at reasonable prices.
 
I hope I didn't overwhelm you with all this information. The world of natural diets is a wonderful place. THere is much to learn and many types of natural diets you can feed. All have their pros and cons. But more often then not there is a type of natural diet for every person and every fuzzy.
 
I myself rotate my ferrets between commercial frozen raw diets (all the brands and flavors listed above), whole prey (frozen-thawed), and Raw Diets Based on the Whole Prey Model (RMB).
 
If natural diets have intriqued you, you can always check out naturalferrets.com or my own forum, Holistic Ferret. Both of which are entirely geared towards natural diets for ferrets.
 
If you have additional questions, please do not hesitate to ask here. There are several people here on the ferret.com forum that are more then happy to help. :)

 
 

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