Nutritional steatis (yellow fat disease) has been documented in ferrets,
usually when a diet had too much of certain oily marinefish in it, but
the culprit is too much poluunsaturated fat or too little vitamin E no
matter what the source.  Information can be found on pages 166 and 167
of _Biology and Diseases of the Ferret, second edition_:
 
"Poluunsaturated fats are highly susceptible to oxidation within the food
source as well as within the host's tissue, and vitamin E is a critical
nutritional component in protecting tissue lipids from oxidative injury."
 
It says that in one outbreak PUFA (polyunsaturated fatty acids) levels
were 7.7% of the diet which was considered excessive.  The ferrets were
being given similat proportions as were used for mink but ferrets'
dietary needs differ from minks'.  BTW, squid is not recommended for
ferrets due to high PUFA levels (17.9%).  (We had one who used to steal
pieces of fried calamari with lemon from me each time I had it and Steve
and I carefully made sure that she had little and far between.)
 
Young growing kits are most susceptible and are "found dead or affected
kits are depressed, cry out... reluctant to move"... "diffuse swellings
undr the skin and prominent lumps in the inguinal areas".., [blood tests
show] marked neutrophilia with a left shift and mild microcytic
normochromic anemia"..."fat in subcutaneous and abdominal areas is
yellow-brown and of a coarse and granular texture...infiltrated with
large macrophagfes, mononuclear cells, and fibroblasts..."  There is a
lot more info there, of course.
 
Treatment is to stop the dietary cause, and affected animals "should be
injected with 10 IU vitamin E daily for 2 days... E is added to the feed
at 30 mg (30 IU)/ferret/day for 10 days, 15 mg for another 5 days, and
10 mg/ferret/day as a maintenance diet.
 
The chances, even among shelter people with the turned in ferrets of
running into this are low, but with several cases recently a person does
have to wonder about the ingredients in the current cheap cat foods.  So,
it is good to know about but the chances of encountering it are low.
 
---
AHEM:  upholstery...
(in memory of my rather strange grandma from Kettering, and hello to
anyone out there who may be a descendent of "Drummer" Salisbury)
[Posted in FML issue 4807]