Diet
Skunks are natural omnivores, and they are extremely food orientated. In the wild they will consume more animal matter than vegetable (if the resources are there) but a pet skunks diet is reversed, in that we feed more plant material than animal matter, around 80-85% vegetables and fruit, 5-10% cereals/whole grains and 10-15% protein (in various forms).
Variety is the spice of life to a skunk, one day they'll root through the food bowl to eat all the red pepper before anything else, the next they'll completely ignore it.
Skunks gain weight easily, the average daily calorific amount should be 150 calories. Obesity will adversely affect your skunks life and will shorten it dramatically.
Skunks should never be fed red meats, grapes (raisins, currants etc.), fried food in any form, chocolate, avocado skins or stones, onions, peanuts or other nuts, or anything containing aspartame.
Fresh water must be available to your skunk at all times.
Use fresh food if you can, frozen can be used on occasions or in an emergency.
Avoid processed foods and foods containing processed sugars.
Vegetables:
- Butternut squash,
- Sweet Potato,
- Carrots,
- Bell Peppers (capsicums),
- Beans and peas (green beans, runner beans, snap peas)
- Sweet corn (on or off the cob)
- Chili Peppers,
- Cauliflower,
- Swede
- Parsnip
- Broccoli
- Tomato
- Beetroot
- Yams
- Radish
- Turnip
Fruit:
- Apples,
- Pears,
- Papaya
- Strawberries,
- Melon,
- Berries (blueberries, blackberries, loganberries, raspberries, gooseberries),
- Redcurrants, Blackcurrant's, and White currants
- Cranberries occasionally,
- Sharon fruit,
- Kiwi fruit,
- Peaches, Apricots and Nectarines,
- Mango
Protein sources:
- live foods such as crickets, morio worms, earthworms, locusts, fruit beetle larvae, mealworms, cockroaches,
- frozen/thawed rodents and day old chicks,
- Cooked chicken and other poultry/fowl,
- occasional treats of cheddar cheese
- Low protein, additive free dog kibble
- Eggs (boiled, scrambled (minus milk), poached),
- Occasional water packed tuna,
- Oats (also good carbohydrate),
- Occasional ferret pellet,
- Occasional tofu.
- Ricotta cheese as it has a more favourable Ca:P over Cottage Cheese and a lower sodium content.
Carbohydrate sources:
- Wholemeal pasta, rice, bread
- plain unadulterated cereals (weetabix, corn flakes, puffed rice)
Vitamins and other supplements:
- Vitaskunk: A blend of vitamins, minerals and amino acids. It contains taurine, calcium carbonate (for healthy bones and teeth), and Vitamins A, E C, and D3. With a balanced healthy diet this should only be required on an occasional basis.
Calcium: Calcium is important for the formation and maintenance of healthy bones and teeth. Diets high in oxalates and phosphorous can be detrimental to the take up of calcium by the digestive system and this can lead to Calcium being stripped from the skeleton for use in the striped skunks metabolism. We aim to balance the ratio of Calcium to Phosphorous in our skunks diet at around 2:1. Vitamin D3 is also an important metabolite in utilising calcium in the bones.
Marie from Shropshire Exotics has posted a useful Microsoft Excel spread sheet for calculating Calcium:Phosphorous in Sugar Glider diets available here at www.sugar-glider.co.uk.
Whilst a lot of people and web sites will recommend cottage cheese as a regular part of the diet we believe due to the inverted Ca:P (2:3)it contains it is not a suitable food to be served on a regular basis. Ricotta cheese is a better option. Whilst it has slightly lower protein content, the Calcium to Phosphorous ratio in Ricotta is almost 2:1 and it only contains 3% lactose, plus it has a lower sodium content than cottage cheese.
Live yogurt is a good addition to a skunks diet as well on occasion, especially for skunks recuperating after antibiotic treatment.
Grapes: A cautionary note
A lot of US sites, including Skunk Haven, include grapes as suitable food for skunks, however us and several other keepers have removed them from our diet plans after we lost two skunks to renal failure within 8 hours of each other, and learned shortly afterwards that somebody else had also lost their two skunks to renal failure. On both these occasions grapes were implicated, ours had gorged on them after knocking a box down, and the others were lost after their owners gave them both a couple of grapes as a treat, the first ones they had ever had, within 24 hours both skunks had died sadly.
We have subsequently removed grapes, raisins, sultanas etc. from any of our diet plans for all of our animals. They have also been implicated in Dog, Meerkat, Sugar Glider and Parrot deaths.