Habanero: What?  Your ferret is eating spicy natives of Havana?  Bad
ferret!  Spit that person out!  (Sorry.  Couldn't resist, so hope the
FML folks will forgive me.)  Seriously, with hot peppers do remember
that there is the risk of tissue irritation for eyes, nose, etc.
 
Rozareo, on her left side, just under the ribs and it is soft tissue
rather than hard?  That would be the bottom portion of her spleen.  Good
for you, haivng asked your vet first so that you can be safe!  That's the
right thing to do.  After all, abnormal lumps can happen where normal
lumps are, too.  One other not-uncommon thing that folks sometimes feel
in the abdomen when they check is feces as it moves along in the
intestines.
 
>I keep reading about adrenal glands and operations for them, but I have
>no idea what on earth they are.  What are adrenal glands, and is there a
>reason Binky should have his removed?
 
If he's healthy then leave them in there! :-)
 
First you can find multiple sites that list ferret vets in:
http://www.ferretcongress.org/
by clicking on "Critical Ferret References" to your left.
 
Adrenal glands produce some essential hormonal products.  That is why
ferrets who have had both removed in full (or have had one out but the
other one is suppressed or atrophied -- an unusual problem which can
occur) have to be on Florinef and Pred, or Percorten and Pred or the
ferret will go into terminal Addison's Crisis.  (Sometimes a substitute
for Pred is used but that is not usual.)  The Florinef or Percorten
allows the regulation of some electrolytes and the Pred allows the
regulation of fluids.  These are essential functions for survival.
 
When adrenal glands become diseased in ferrets it is virtually always
(note the qualifier) a hyperestrogenic form of illness which involves
symptoms like fur loss, vulvar swelling, skin sores, pear shape or other
unusual fat deposition for healthy ferrets who are not very old and are
kept a normal weight, prostate enlargement (and sometimes prostatic
cysts) which will often be very dangerous because of inability to
urinate, anemia that can be life threatening, UTIs, vaginal infections,
etc.  Obviously, even though the cause is usually (but not always) a
benign one, diseased adrenal glands need to come out and the tissues
removed should be biopsied by a ferret-knowledgeable veterinary
pathologist (which is always the smart thing to do when tissue is
removed in surgery, any way).
 
You can also learn more in the discussions and files at
http://www.smartgroups.com/groups/ferrethealth
and the archives at
http://fhl.sonic-weasel.org/
(which can also be reached by clicking on the "Complete Archive" bold
print on the FHL home page).
 
LOL!  Good common sense, post, Betty (though we try for less fat than
that description if I read it right during the warm months and year
round *when possible*, it sounds like you are still not talking fat-fat).
Like you, we put a lot of faith in exercise for them as one of the big
components for good health.  Yes, they sure do vary a lot!
 
>Over the last five years of working with the Alberta Ferret Society I've
>spoken with many people who also had ferrets "way back when" and who
>also fed what today we would consider totally "inappropriate" diets
>(cheap cat food/table scraps etc).  The one thing I found in common with
>all of them was that they each claim that their ferrets lived to be
>between 9-12 years.
 
Same here.  I don't personally suspect that it was the food, though no
one knows for sure, I gather, so perhaps something was right there which
has been missed since -- I don't know.  What seemed more closely aligned
in my observations (note the qualifiers) was that a number of fancy-coat
fur fitch wound up in the pet stock breeding pools and those fancies
were preferentially bred so that their genes wound up in a lot of the
population.  One reason that I think this is a serious component is
because folks have been sending me death ages for blaze and panda ferrets
for some time now years -- (Note that this is not a well designed
sampling method so could easily be off), and while there are some of
those who make it into normal old ages or 7 or 8 years old there appears
to be a huge number who just don't make it to normal old age, let alone
old-old.  I think that an "appearance first" mentality has damaged the
viability of the pet stock in North America and that we all need to be
asking breeders for health and longevity records when acquiring ferrets
privately and simply walking out if those aren't supplied, and going
preferentially to private breeders with such records when we aren't
rescuing.
[Posted in FML issue 3954]