For permitted rehabbers
These are for permitted rehabilitators feeding squirrels in care. If you have found a baby squirrel, it needs a rehabber, not a recipe — text 901-340-6534.
Squirrel blocks are the backbone of a weaned squirrel's diet and buying them gets expensive fast at volume. These are the two we make. The first is our main recipe and the one we have costed out; the second is faster and useful when you are short on time.
Recipe 1 — our standard block
Dry
3 cups crushed nuts
1 3/4 cups whey protein isolate powder (any brand; Henry's works)
100 g Henry's Healthy Vita-mins
2/3 cup whole wheat flour
2 tsp baking powder
Wet
2 tsp vanilla extract or flavouring
3 large eggs
1 tbsp almond butter
1 cup pureed pumpkin
1/2 cup pureed baby food (we use 4 oz jars or pouches — apple, carrot, kale, avocado)
1/4 cup water
1 tbsp coconut oil
Method
Preheat the oven to 205°F. Spread the mixture into a greased 15x10 cookie sheet or use parchment — it comes out around an inch thick. The mixture will be very thick and sticky. Bake 90 minutes. Cut into blocks while still warm. Once cooled, transfer to freezer bags and keep frozen until you feed. Thaw overnight or feed frozen.
What it costs
Prices from spring 2022, so treat them as a ratio rather than a quote.
Protein $6.00
Vitamins $13.00
Baby food $1.50
3 cups nuts $10.00
1 cup pumpkin $1.00
3 eggs $0.50
Flour $0.50
Baking powder $0.25
Vanilla $0.50
Coconut oil $0.25
Almond butter $0.25
About $30 to $33 per batch, yielding roughly 48 oz. That is about $0.67 per ounce. Henry's runs around $20 for 11 oz, or about $1.82 per ounce. Making your own is roughly a third of the cost, and at any volume that is real money back into patients.
Recipe 2 — the fast one
8 cups quality rodent block (Mazuri or Envigo)
2 cups nuts
1 cup formula powder (Esbilac or Fox Valley 20/50)
1/2 cup melted coconut oil
10 to 12 pouches of fruit and vegetable baby food
Method
Grind the rodent block to a fine powder. Grind or chop the nuts. Mix block, nuts and formula powder together. Add the coconut oil. Add as much baby food as it takes to reach a cookie-dough consistency. Press into a parchment-lined pan about 1/2 inch deep. Cut into small squares, place on a cookie sheet, and bake at 350°F for about 10 minutes.
On diet more broadly
Blocks are the foundation, not the whole diet, and the calcium-to-phosphorus balance of everything else you offer is what keeps metabolic bone disease off your caseload. High-oxalate vegetables bind calcium and should be limited. If you want to talk through a diet, text 901-340-6534.