Greetings FMLers,

I have a 6 year old male with a skin lump that should be removed. The
plan is to take care of that and draw some blood for testing. My vet...
someone who seems to have a good amount of experience with exotics,
including ferrets, has firmly advised me to withhold food for 12 hours
and water for 8 hours prior to the procedure. While reading up on
pertinent subjects I have come across evidence which suggests that
some vets may recommend a similar fasting period. However, most of the
information I've come across suggests a shorter pre-surgery fasting
period. I've also come across information which suggests that fasting
beyond 6 or 8 hours may make the result of the glucose test less
reliable. So I'm a little confused about the duration that was
recommended to me.

This is my only ferret, which makes monitoring his input/output
relatively easy. I've only just recently started to keep close tabs on
that though. At this point it seems he routinely goes 3-5 hours without
drinking, and I believe he has voluntarily gone 6-7 hours without
drinking. It seems he routinely goes 4-7 hours without eating, and I
know for sure that he has on rare occasions gone up to 10 or 11 hours
without eating. Just recently I've come to suspect that food & water
consumption might be significantly influenced by how close his bowls
are to where he is sleeping. He is free range, and not only have I
moved his bowls around from time to time, but his preferred sleeping
place has changed from time to time. I think he may drink and eat more
often when the bowls are very close by, particularly when they are
passed on the way to the litter box. I've seen no signs of him favoring
spots that are close to the bowls though. Anyway, to complete the
picture, lately he has been a solid 13-14 pee, 4-5 poop a day guy. I
don't know if that qualifies as polyuria, but there was some concern on
that front and we ended up doing a non-fasting urine test (everything
supposedly OK except low SG) followed by a 6 hr water deprivation test
(only SG tested and supposedly it increased to normal range and enough
in that timespan to satisfy my vet). My guy seems pretty healthy
otherwise, but I'm looking forward to seeing what the blood test says.

So... given his voluntary behaviors and an ordinary day I'm inclined
to think that he'd be OK after a fast of the recommended duration.
However, it won't be an ordinary day. He'll be going under for the
first time and he'll be having blood drawn and that should be reliably
interpretable. What do you think of the recommended duration given the
context?

Thanks in advance!

[Posted in FML 5650]