Dog food in general has too little protein, too little fat, too much
starch, and no added taurine -- among other differences from ferret
food -- making it very unsuitable and even dangerous as a primary diet
for ferrets.  If you can't get ferret food then a high quality kitten
food is a better kibble choice.
 
Yvonne, are you sure this is diabetes and not insulinoma?  Your
description of what you do does not sound like diabetes.  If diabetes,
what insulin type are you using?  Also, if so then has Lupron been tried?
That may sounds strange but it helps some ferrets with diabetes, and Dr.
Jerry Murray explains why in a past post in http://fhl.sonic-weasel.org
which has multiple diabetes posts that should help.  With diabetes the
blood glucose (blood sugar) winds up too high, the opposite of insulinoma
(a common ferret ailment) where blood sugar winds up too low.  What you
write does not add up for me unless some insulin with which you are
medicating is having a strong effect at times.  It sounds more like you
mean insulinoma which is the functional opposite of diabetes.  For
insulinoma Prednisolone and Diazoxide/Proglycem are the drugs of choice
and many vets also use surgery.  For diabetes but NOT for insulinoma
Brewers Yeast or other chromium sources can be useful.
 
Balasz, your vet is not used to the way ferret livers respond to lack of
food or trouble digesting it.  This will help your vet.  You will want
to copy the entire article and send your vet to the website in general.
It has a lot to help vets written by a vet pathologist who is a ferret
expert, Dr. Bruce Williams:
http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html
in this case specifically
http://www.afip.org/ferrets/Clin_Path/ClinPath.html
The paragraphs below are carried here with their author's permission:
Probably the most common misinterpretation that I see on a routine basis
is in the area of hepatic enzymes.  Remember, that the ferret, being by
nature an obligate carnivore, has an extremely short digestive tract, and
requires meals as often as every four to six hours.  Should food not be
available, it possesses the ability to quickly mobilize peripheral fat
stores in order to meet energy requirements.  When this physiologic
mechanism is activated, the liver is literally flooded with fat, which
results in hepatocellular swelling which may be marked.  The result of
this swelling is the leakage of membrane enzymes such as alanine
aminotransferase, and as the hepatocellular swelling increases, occlusion
of bile canaliculi occurs, resulting, over time, in elevation of alkaline
phosphatase.
 
In conjunction with this physiologic change, elevations of ALT up to
800 mg/dl can be seen, and alkaline phosphatase up to approximately
100 mg/dl.  This often causes confusion to practitioners, who render an
erroneous diagnosis of unspecified hepatic disease.  However, hepatic
disease is quite uncommon in this species; the most common cause of true
hepatic disease in the ferret is neoplasia, with lymphosarcoma causing
95% of cases.  Rarely bacterial infections of the liver or biliary tree
may be seen.
 
The diagnosis of hepatic disease in the ferret must be based not only on
ALT and alkaline phosphatase, but other clinical indicators in the CBC
and chem panel.  Clinical elevation of icterus or an elevated bilirubin
is an excellent indicatior of primary hepatic disease, or concomitant
leukocytosis or pyrexia may lend additional credence to a diagnosis of
primary hepatic disease.
[Posted in FML issue 4716]