Hello, fellow ferret fanciers.  My message was garbled last time so I thought
I'd give it another shot.  We have two of the little devils, Tut and Cleo.
Male/female neutered sables.  She is descented.  He came first about 3 years
ago and retained his identity (scent).  He is such a mellow guy that only
his scent tells us when he is disturbed.  He makes his point quite strongly
but hasn't done so in about 2 years.
They have run of the house when we are home except for the utility room where
I keep insecticides and such.  The house is pretty much ferret-proof having
learned from experience that they are extremely canny in getting into places
where they shouldn't.  When we're not at home, they have the run of the rec
room.  They are fairly well trained to use the litter box but as Alan said,
they sometimes are in a hurry and there are a lot of corners in a 3 story
townhouse.  We give them daily doses of linatone for which they will kill
and some liquid vitamins which we just started.  Cleo will occasionally
 
[What kind of vitamins?]
 
nip me, not hard, but she frequently goes after my wife's ankles.  I be-
lieve it is because my wife is Australian and uses a variety of colloquial-
isms other than NO.  It is because Cleo is the perkier of the two and in-s
sists on playing constantly.
While they are generally healthy, we may have a problem.  One of them, I
think the male, appears to have some blood in his urine.  This just started
so we are trying to nail it down as to which one.  We've put paper towels in
the litter box.  I was just reading about FUS in cats (we have none but there
are things that work commonly for cats and ferrets) which is thought to be
caused by high magnesium and/or ash content found in commercial cat foods.
We feed our guys THRIVE after trying several other brands, including a
very expensive ferret breeders mix, to their disdain.  I am now wondering
if we could be encountering a urinary tract problem.  I will be checking
this out further but in the interim, Shu-ju's vet husband might have some
ideas.  Finding a vet who is knowledgeble about ferrets is difficult.  I
would like to know what others of you feed your ferrets and if any have ex-
perienced similar problems.  We'll keep you posted as things develop.  BTW
Tut is 3 years old if that eliminates any problems related to age.  Thanks.
 
[ I suggest that you get the affected one to a vet ASAP - Ferrets, being
very small can deteriorate VERY rapidly.  You can figure out which one it
is by separating them with different litter boxes.  With something like
this almost any vet should be able to handle it.  (I almost said Cleo's
in heat, but I see that she's neutered.)  In my reading of Ferret lit (including
a veterinarian ferret-care synopsis from one of the journals), there doesn't
seem to be any reference to FUS in Ferrets, though our vet recommends
Science Diet Feline Maintenance to be on the safe side.  They won't take
any other cat food now.  Which, except for the occasional treat is all
our ferrets get.  They don't like the other cat foods anymore.  Specialized
"ferret food" appears to be (according to our vet) a rip-off and is
really just ordinary cat food with a higher price.]
 
Scott Dudley
                                                                          
[Posted in FML 0003]