Blog
New feature: your own ferret calendar!
by ferretpapa
If you go to your profile, you'll see a "My Calendar" link in the top right. This will link to your very own calendar which has all of your ferrets' birthdays and anniversaries on it!
Click the "Copy" button to add the link to your clipboard. Then just follow the instructions for adding an external calendar to your calendar:
- Google Calendar - scroll down to "Use a link to add a public calendar"
- macOS Calendar
Now you'll see all of these special days on your calendar. The best part is, you can share this URL with your friends and family too!
Notes:
- You can download the "My Calendar" file too, but then it won't sync any updates. It's best to subscribe to the URL from your calendar application.
- If you add new birthdays/anniversaries, it may take a few days for your calendar to sync the changes.
More profile customizations!
by ferretpapa
The number one feature requested on my feedback form so far has been more profile customizations!
I've added several new fonts and you can now preview the fonts in the dropdown. You can also choose bold or normal font weight. If you have a specific font you'd like me to add, just comment on this post or submit the feedback form and I'll try to add it (specifically anything from Adobe Fonts).
I also added a couple more settings like setting a separate font for your custom links, and customizing the text color for your ferrets (previously you could only set the background color and the text color would always be white, which didn't work well for light colored backgrounds). And finally I fixed a few bugs so that your bio will use the "body font", and fixed bugs where the shapes wouldn't preview correctly.
What else would you like to be able to customize? Link button size, shadow? Let me know in the comments!
Similar foods
by ferretpapa
I'm working on mapping which foods are most similar to each other. You can see this by clicking on any food and scrolling to the bottom of the page. The intended purpose for this is if you're feeding something that has gone out of stock and need to find a replacement. As we all know, ferrets are extremely picky, and getting them to try something new is difficult!
It will only show foods that are the same type (kibble, canned, etc.) and have the same primary protein source (chicken, duck, lamb, etc.).
From there it looks at all of the foods that match those 2 criteria and compares the meat, protein, and fat percentages, and the protein-to-fat ratio. So really, it's just comparing similar analysis but not ingredients.
For raw and canned foods, this is probably enough. These are usually 90+% meat-based anyways, so as long as they share the same primary animal protein, they should taste similar. For kibbles though, those filler ingredients like corn, potatoes, and so on have a huge effect on the flavor of the food.
So this is still a work in progress, the next version will also look at all the individual ingredients and see which ones they have in common.
Just remember though, ferrets will always be picky. Even if two foods are almost identical, they may turn their nose up at them. An example I've witnessed among my own ferrets is feeding the Ziwipeak chicken cat food vs. Ziwipeak chicken dog food. You couldn't possibly find two foods that are more similar. Literally the only differences are in the size of the pieces and the vitamin and mineral additives. But they'll refuse to eat one or the other.
So if your go-to kibble is out of stock and you're being forced to try something new, you might as well go for a healthier option.
Tracking changes in foods
by ferretpapa
Today I just launched a new feature where I can keep track of all the changes in the different foods.
Here's an example, for Ziwipeak air-dried mackerel and lamb. Ziwi recently updated all of their air-dried recipes. Some of the protein, fat, and fiber percentages were also slightly changed. And the old URLs to their products were also broken.
Feb 20, 2023
Protein percentage increased from 43% to 44%
Fat percentage decreased from 25% to 24%
Fiber percentage increased from 2% to 3%
Source URL updated
Ingredients list changed:
Removed:mackerel inulin from chicory dried kelp sodium selenite
Added:
whole mackerel lamb spleen inulin dried apple pomace lamb cartilage dried organic kelp
This will only be for new changes moving forward, so unfortunately any past recipe changes are lost.
In the future I'm hoping to let you "watch" certain foods so that you get notified of changes. For now, when you view a food, if there have been changes since I started tracking it, a "History" section will appear at the bottom of the page with more details.
Article series and artwork
by ferretpapa
As I've been writing more articles, I've noticed it's getting a little hard to find any structure and read through them.
So today I added new article series which group related articles together and in an order that makes sense.
Please check them out and let me know what you think!
Update: You can also now search articles, so that should make it easier to find what you're looking for.
Finally, I'm working on awarding badges when you complete a series.
I'm also super excited to announce that Katelyn McManis is making custom artwork for my articles. Hopefully the text and artwork will be published in a book someday.