I was wondering what people have encountered as the largest causes of
deaths with their ferrets.  We've had ferrets in the family for 24
years and for our household by far the most common cause of death has
been lymphoma/lymphosarcoma with individual cases and two clumps.
 
Unless a person counts one we had who had his lymphoma first show up
in an adrenal we haven't lose one to adrenal disease.  Of those with
pancreatic disease none here had diabetes (except for temporary diabetes
in an elderly one after insulinoma surgery but she died later of
cardiomyopathy) -- all had insulinoma- like symptoms but of those one
was actually carcinoma, one was actually lymphoma, and one actually had
definite insulinoma without those malignancies but died after many months
of managing her health carefully of a rare cardiac complication of
insulinoma (Complete A/V Heart Node Block).  Over the years a few have
had cardiomyopathy -- two very elderly, one very deformed with a lot of
life-threatening things simultaneous, one neural crest variation marking
ferret with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (There is an interesting paper on
how some neural crest variations may increase the risk factor for that.).
We've had some die of other causes, of course, such as one from an
anaphylactic reaction to an antibiotic, one from DIM/mystery disease,
one from the vets no longer being able to do any further corrections for
a GI congenital malformation, etc.  Most here, though, have wound up --
usually when elderly -- with lymphoma/lymphosarcoma.
 
I'd be interested in knowing about others' families in this regard.
[Posted in FML issue 4789]