Dear all,
thank you for accepting me on FML. I apologise for the length of this
post but if *anyone* has any ideas about this catalogue of disasters,
please share.

I did have six ferrets. Now I have one, and he's very sick, but my
vets are currently mystified about what is happening.

I got Fiora, Din, Gwen and Emrys from Woodgreen animal rescue in
November. They were all apparently healthy, although Fiora always
seemed weak and unbalanced, and they didn't act as lively as we'd been
lead to expect. Fiora, a young, neutered polecat jill, became ill
first, in January. We found her semi-conscious and took her straight to
the vets, where they put her on fluids and antibiotics, but had no idea
what was wrong with her. It was noted she had significant 'bruising'
and swelling to her lower abdomen, petechiae (sp?) to her face and
bruising to her mouth.

Tests revealed she had high liver enzymes so a course of vitamin K was
started, along with antibiotics and we were told to expect a poor
prognosis. She appeared to rally, but two weeks later, we admitted her
to an exotics vet practice in respiratory distress and showing signs of
kidney failure, so she was PTS. All of the blood test results and signs
showed the most likely diagnosis was juvenile lymphoma and we had no
reason to suspect that was incorrect at the time.

Satisfied that Fiora did not have anything contagious, we decided to
take on two more ferrets, Spike (a castrated 1yo hob) and Buffy (8mo
jill) a couple of weeks later.

Din, our other neutered polecat jill seemed initially fine, happily
accepting the newbies, but two weeks after that, we found her
apparently vomiting blood and there was frank blood in her stool, which
was also very mucousy. Our regular vet found that she had a mass, the
size of a 'cherry tomato' in her abdomen, which he felt was most likely
the cause, but also decided to treat her for H.mustalae. He was not
optimistic, fearing she too had lymphoma, but tried her on steroids,
Flagyl and an antacid. Although Din continued to have diarrhoea for two
weeks, she improved significantly and had started running around and
playing like a healthy ferret. However, two days after that we found
her dead on the floor of the shed. Believing that it was just rotten
luck, we didn't think there was any reason to enquire further.

Things were fine for a while, but in March we had an
uncharacteristically hot day and our shed over-heated. We found all
four remaining ferrets collapsed and assumed it was heat stroke, but
when we got to the vets, they discovered none of the ferrets had a high
temperature. We assumed maybe we'd over-done the cooling, but there
were a couple of odd features to this disaster. Buffy, it turned out,
had a pneumothorax. Gwen was collapsed and behaved as if she'd had
a stroke, even long after her temperature and hydration state were
normal. Her tongue was black, as if it were bruised and there was
bruising to her face. Emrys recovered in minutes, and Spike had a
bruise to his mouth and couldn't eat kibble. We thought at the time
that they must have fallen out of the hammock when afflicted by heat,
because nothing else made sense.

X-rays revealed nothing of interest, except that Gwen was obese. Bloods
were NAD.

They all appeared to recover, Buffy having had her lung re-inflated
successfully, but a couple of weeks after that, Buffy had diarrhoea,
bled from her anus and collapsed again. We took her to the exotics vet
where she was given fluids and antibiotics and appeared to recover.
X-rays, scans and extensive blood panels were done, but NAD.

Buffy recovered but a couple of weeks later, had another bout
of diarrhoea, this time without bleeding. Meanwhile, Emrys, our
elderly hob, suddenly lost the movement in his back legs and became
incontinent. I took him to the exotics vet, to where I'd switched
their care, and he did x-rays, scans and blood tests. NAD again.

Then last Sunday, with Buffy still recovering from diarrhoea, we went
in the shed where Emrys, who had been improving, walked across the
floor, climbed a small ladder then had a seizure and bled out from his
mouth. He was dead in seconds. We took his body to the vets, where a
necropsy was carried out. Preliminary results show that the gut was
normal, no obvious problems with other organs, but the blood appeared
to emanate from either his trachea or cranium (I had been unable to
keep the body sufficiently cool and there was a vast amount of blood in
his head region). We're currently awaiting the lab test results from
samples of his organs.

The remaining jills, Gwen and Buffy were both collapsed. Buffy had
diarrhoea again, and Gwen was off her feet. The vet started Buffy on
flagyl with instructions to monitor her, and he took bloods from Gwen,
which came back NAD. Spike, our remaining hob appeared perfectly
healthy. Buffy's diarrhoea went by the next day.

Yesterday, having appeared fine all day, Buffy started to have blood
coming from her mouth, just like Emrys. And Gwen's 'neurological'
problems seemed much worse. I took them to the vet who advised both
be PTS. Spike appeared upset but all right.

Later that evening, Spike started to fall to the left when he tried to
walk and is very lethargic. I'd blame the upset, only I have a very bad
feeling about it and won't be surprised if we lose Spike too.

So that's our story to date. My dog Shadow is also ill. I don't know if
its connected, but he had a very high temperature, was off his food and
had blood in his urine. Pyelonephritis is his tentative diagnosis but
the causative organism has not been found.

I'd appreciate any insights you may have. Just to note, please, we
have eliminated all the common causes including rat poison (warfarin),
ethylene glycol, trauma (even the pneumothorax was not proved to be
traumatic). The ferrets were vaccinated against CD and treated for
mites with ivermectin spot-on (from the exotic's vets, and after two
had already died). We are not aware of any pest control in the area or
agricultural spraying and the ferrets are fed a combination of quality
ferret kibbles, cat milk, egg and cooked chicken. We also use Cathys
Ferretoil as a treat.

Anna Hayward

[Posted in FML 7796]