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In no particular order, things that came up when I made this gravy (your mileage may vary):

Set aside several hours the first time you make Bob's Chicken Gravy. It's much more pleasant to not be terribly rushed while figuring things out. You'll discover a lot of little tricks as you go along, and these will probably speed up future gravy-making sessions.

Using a hand crank meat grinder to initially grind up everything works pretty well. (I found one called Back to Basics for about $40 at Reading, a store in the outlet mall near the Airport). You still have to get the chicken in small hunks to get it to go through the grinder, but it seems more suitable for the initial grinding up than a blender (a heavy-duty blender might work better than mine, which is rather cheap and flimsy). After the chicken, skin, and fat go through the meat grinder, I did the cooking stage, and it came out looking like hamburger. I then ran that through the blender until it was smooth enough that my ferrets ate it. It's good to work them up to lumpy gravy, but I find that it has to be a very gradual thing.

If you're not using the meat grinder: Raw skin and fat do not blend well in my blender. They only gum up the blades and become a disgusting mass to unwind/scrape away after you notice the blender is not grinding things up properly. Some people have suggested using poultry shears to cut them into tiny chunks. I found it easier to not blend them at all at first, and then cook them in big pieces along with the blended meat/bone. After cooking, run everything through the blender again, and the cooked skin seems to blend up just fine.

If the stuff gets too thick in the blender, and the blades are just whirling around under the chicken (you'll hear it if it happens, I'm sure it doesn't make sense reading it), add some water to the blender, and that should get things going right again.

Poultry shears are a great way to cut the chicken into hunks. They even handle the smaller bones easily. Bob suggests using a hammer to smash the big bones into small pieces, but I haven't tried it. I used a cleaver to cut them up, which worked pretty well, but my cleaver was a $9.00 cheap-o model, and the bones bent the blade all to heck.

Bob's bread trick (dip gravy in bread for the first time to get them to taste it) did not work on my ferrets. One of my ferrets ate the gravy right off the bat--he was already eating a duck soup based on chicken baby food, but the other three had to be, um, forced to taste it at first. Now they all love it and eat it eagerly. To get them to taste it, I scruffed them and scooped a little bit of gravy (no lumps at first, please!) on a finger, and then scraped the gravy onto their tongues/roof of the mouths. A syringe would work, too, but be really careful not to squirt anything down the fuzzy's throat. It only took once or twice of this scruff-n-stuff treatment for two of my ferrets. One of my ferrets took probably seven or eight times before she decided it was yummy. I only made them taste it once a day, so it wasn't very stressful. It's a treat for three of my ferrets, who eat TF for Older Ferrets as their main diet; gravy is Willard's staple food these days, and he's doing fabulous on it.

Beware adding too much water during the cooking stage. I think the recipe says, at the start of cooking, to add enough water to make a thin gravy. Remember, there is a lot of fat in there that will melt once it gets hot, and then it will turn to liquid. Also, you'll be adding a couple tablespoons of oil and some nutrical, and these will all thin the gravy. The first time I made the gravy, it came out much too watery because I added too much water at the beginning. I added another cup and a half of ground kibble to thicken it up a bit, and that seems to have worked fine. However, you can always add more water to thin it out, and this wouldn't alter the major ingredients of the recipe nearly as much as adding kibble later!

The "lumps" (bits of bone and cartilage) are a turn-off for many newbie gravy-eating ferrets. For their first gravy experience, make the gravy fairly thin, and try to grind everything up really smooth. You might even want to strain a little bit of your first batch, just to make it the least "weird" for your ferret. As they get used to the gravy and as you make future batches, try allowing more lumps in.