What To Avoid When Feeding A Pet Raccoon
Raccoons living in the wild are greedy for nuts like acorns, beechnuts and walnuts. Your pet raccoon will love them too. But you should limit his consumption of this high-calorie food.
In fact, wild raccoons eat nuts to prepare for the cold winter. Eating nuts is a raccoon’s way to store fat in his body to survive the winter. Your raccoon, who lives inside your warm house, does not need any extra fat during the winter. For this reason, you need to control the amount of calories he eats, which translates into not feeding him too many nuts.
Raccoons living in captivity have a tendency toward obesity, so you need to monitor your raccoon’s diet carefully. These critters have a sweet tooth too, and they enjoy treats like marshmallows. You should avoid sweets altogether or at least limit their consumption. If your raccoon becomes overweight, you will have an unhealthy pet raccoon.
There is one more important point concerning what do baby raccoons eat: They love to soak their food in water. You should put a bowl of water next to your raccoon’s food so that water is always available during meals. Your critter will not be careful with the water and will often spill or overturn the bowl. Feeding a pet raccoon means cleaning up his mess every time he eats.
Conclusions On Feeding A Pet Raccoon
What do baby raccoons eat is a serious responsibility. A raccoon may eat almost anything that gets close to his mouth, but a captive raccoon needs special attention.
His health and life expectancy depend on what you decide to feed him. As we already mentioned, a diet that is not balanced may lead to raccoon obesity, which is potentially fatal.
A captive raccoon does not have as active a life as a wild raccoon, and this is another factor that should guide your decisions on the quantity of food to give him.
Feeding a raccoon is just a small part of the big challenge of raising a pet raccoon. These exotic pets require a lot of care and patience, and you need to be willing to dedicate a good portion of every day to your pet — because his life is literally in your hands.
Comments 1
CostumeLooks
August 17, 2019 |
A good rule of thumb is to feed eyes-closed baby raccoons 5% of body weight at every feeding, with eyes-open babies comfortably taking between 5% and 7% of body weight at each meal. If the baby is weighed in grams, to calculate number of cc (c = l) of formula per feeding, simply divide the weight by 100 and multiply by 5 to get 5%, and by 7 to get 7%.