Howdy All:
 
A few replies to questions posed recently.
 
TO: <anon>
>Subject: Introduction and Questions
 
>    We both work all day and feel awful for leaving him alone all day.  We have
>considered getting another little guy to keep him company.  Should we do
>this?  Is it bad to leave the little guy alone during the day?  If we do,
>should we get another male?
-----We were in a similar situation about two years ago.  We had a single,
very mellow female ferret (about 1 year old) and bought her a playmate.  We
are really happy with the outcome.  Although they still sleep together most
of the day (even though they have free run of their room), I think they are
happier to have another ferret playmate.  I think that if you are going to
get a playmate, then another ferret would be the way to go.
 
>My question is this - he had the same food for
>two months and seemed to love it.  All of a sudden we go on vacation, have a
>friend watch him, and he gets finicky?  Is this normal?
-----If you were feeding Iams, then there may be an explanation.  They
reformulated their dry cat foods a while back, and the taste was
dramatically changed.  When we gave the new stuff to our ferrets, they
chose to eat a cotton throw rug instead (others had the same experience).
We ultimately switched to Science Diet Growth and they immediately went for
it.
 
AND,
 
TO: <anon>
>Subject: Skin problem
 
>Ronin, Katana, Wakazashi, my wife and I have a problem. The first three
>fore-mentioned of us have a skin problem, consisting of orange-ish crusty
>speckles along their spines, with some scabing (from scratching?).
-----As most people who have been with the list are aware, this orange
crustiness seems to be a fairly frequent observation.  While mites may be
the reason, often the cause of this crustiness remains an enigma.  One of
our ferrets has had this problem for about a year.  We have taken her to
the Cornell University Veterinary Clinic, where she was given a fairly
exhaustive examination by at least two pathologists familiar with ferrets
(they are pretty popular here).  Every test was negative - no mites, no
nothin'.  It was suggested that it might be an allergic reaction to some
environmental factor, and that the orange spots were possibly the result of
overactive oil glands.  I buy that!  Since then, the crustiness has
disappeared for the most part, though smaller spots have shown up in other
areas.  In our case, there has been no effect of the "crusties" on the
ferret's general health.  If your vet pathology comes back negative, I
wouldn't worry.  Just bear with it and it will likely SLOWLY go away (it
may expand for a while, but in four to six months, it will gradually begin
to disappear).
 
[Our vet considered it to be seborhea (spelling?), and simply prescribed
a shampoo for it.  Like you would for people.  Seemed to work fine.]
 
Ciao - DAVE and "the girls"
 
[Posted in FML issue 0889]