VITAMINS AND MINERALS:
 
The question of feeding vitamins and minerals to a sick ferret is a
difficult one to answer.  Simplistically, they either need them or they
don't, and supplementing a diet with vitamins and minerals that are
unneeded is wasteful and perhaps even dangerous.  Complicating the issue
is that vitamin and mineral requirements for ferrets are largely unknown.
There ARE published values for ferret vitamin and mineral needs, but
many of them were determined by dosing pregnant jills, and if the jill
delivered and raised kits to weaning, the amount was considered
sufficient.  Nonetheless, the actual physiological requirements for most
vitamins and minerals have largely not been determined in ferrets.
 
In short-term cases where a ferret's stay in the hospital cage is
limited, vitamin and mineral supplements are probably unnecessary.
If the ferret is eating food without problem and the diet is deemed
complete, vitamin or mineral supplements are probably unnecessary.  In
cases where the ferret has some sort of gastrointestinal problem, such
as suffering from the effects of ECE, various bowel inflammatory
diseases, a major bowel resection, or if the ferret is being hand fed a
diet of baby food or other nutritionally-limited food, vitamin and/or
mineral supplementation may be considered, but first discuss the
perceived need with your vet.  Generally speaking, I think short-term
problems do not require vitamin or mineral supplementation, but I nearly
always supplement vitamins and minerals during long-term sick cage
hospitalizations, or for protracted hand feeding.
 
Once you determine a REAL need for vitamin and mineral supplementation,
there are three basic ways you can accomplish the task.  You can ask the
vet for a prescription, you can feed a commercial product, or you can mix
up your own formulation.  If you ask the vet for a prescription, while it
is generally more expensive, you know exactly what the vet wants AND the
vet knows what you are giving.  That is a good thing for you, the vet,
AND the ferret.  Also, if you are able to work out the math for
determining the proper dose, you can run over to Walmart and buy cheaper
generic versions of the vitamins and minerals, although from my
experience, they are not that much cheaper than what the vet sells,
although from a purity standard they are of higher quality (human-grade
standards apply).
 
Using commercial vitamin and mineral preparations, such as Ferretvite or
Nutrical, has both advantages and disadvantages.  On one hand, amounts at
the suggested dose will not harm your ferret, and ferrets generally like
the stuff.  On the other hand, these products contain a lot of additional
things your ferret probably doesn't need.  For example, your ferret may
need some taurine and a light dose of fat-soluble vitamins, but they may
already meet their mineral and water-soluble vitamin needs, so
supplementing those is unnecessary.  It is perhaps even dangerous, as
some recent studies have demonstrated.  For example, for decades it was
thought that unless you consumed a toxic quantity (a one-time mega-dose),
you couldn't overdose with water-soluble vitamins or minerals.  The
established dogma was that the body used what it could and the rest was
flushed out of the system.  Recent studies have challenged this idea, and
several water-soluble vitamins and minerals are now seen as health risks
in high-end doses.  For example, excessive iron intake has been linked
to cardiovascular disease and the high intake of several water-soluble
vitamins to tumor growth and immune problems.  Fat-soluble vitamins are
another story; they are stored in the body and can reach toxic levels if
the ferret eats too many of them in too short of a period of time.
However, even if the danger is present for both fat- and water-soluble
vitamins and minerals, with commercial preparations these problems are
minimal assuming you DO NOT ADD ADDITIONAL SUPPLEMENTS, such as found in
some versions of duck soup.
 
Bob C
[Posted in FML issue 4408]