NOT all raw foods/flesh foods contain salmonella. That assumption
should not be made.
The ones with salmonella levels above a certain point are especially
dangerous.
Salmonella is extremely dangerous for some species such as humans and
dogs.
With ferrets: healthy ferrets (Note that I specially said "healthy".)
are less likely to get salmonella. The trick with ferrets is that when
they do get salmonella is can be a terrible disease, even fatal, and
hard to treat. Even healthy ferrets can get salmonella if they are
eating foods with salmonella levels that are too high.
Now, there are worse forms of food poisoning than salmonella, and that
is also true for ferrets and humans, but don't run the risk of being
cavalier just because some raw foods can contain salmonella and most
healthy ferrets can deal with low or maybe even moderate levels of
exposure, or sometime you may run the risk of accidently feeding a
compromised ferret (who you may not even yet realize is compromised,
as with early insulinoma) infected food, or you may not follow recall
advice and feed ANY ferrets foods with high enough salmonella levels
that even healthy ones could wind up with a dangerous infection.
Sukie (not a vet)
Recommended ferret health links:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/http://ferrethealth.org/archive/http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.htmlhttp://www.miamiferret.org/http://www.ferrethealth.msu.edu/http://www.ferretcongress.org/http://www.trifl.org/index.shtmlhttp://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html
all ferret topics:
http://listserv.ferretmailinglist.org/archives/ferret-search.html
"All hail the procrastinators for they shall rule the world tomorrow."
(2010, Steve Crandall)
[Posted in FML 6775]
