Hi ferret people,
 
I was reading about the female ferret Hale, who was fighting
an illness for several months before dying and wanted to share
a concern. Most of you, if you have books on ferrets, already
know but for those that don't, female ferrets MUST EITHER BE
BRED OR FIXED OR THEY MAY DIE! Ferrets stay in the heat cycle
for 6 months if they are not bred and their metabolism(sp)
changes so much that they get sick and if not taken care of
die. After breeding our ferrets we decided to get Rascal
fixed and use him to get Shadow out of her heat cycle. What
we didn't know was that after getting him fixed he would lose
all interest in sex and eventually we ended up taking Shadow
to the vet to be fixed. We didn't really want to because if
ferrets become legal in [state] we wanted to breed her again.
The vet gave us heck for waiting so long to bring her in. By
the way Shadow was a very good mother, letting us handle the
babies but always watching, and after the babies were a few
weeks old we reunited Shadow and family with Rascal and it
was great! They all got along real well.
 
                                        So long for now,
 
                                        GC
                                                                          
[Posted in FML 0004]