A week or two ago, I got a call from a woman who was concerned about her 2
year old gib.  Last fall he had been very sick, and run up $700 in vet
bills.  Symptoms included loss of appetite, poor coat, lethargy, shedding,
etc.  Her vet was concerned and caring, but has little ferret experience.
 
Well now he was starting to show the same symptoms again, and she was
worried.  The funny thing is she said, when she and her husband were
students, he had a ferret and didn't really take very good care of it.  The
guy never got sick and lived to be 9 years old.  They lavish all sorts of
attention on this one, and he is always sick!  (I forget what food they are
feeding, but it is ok.)
 
I suggested she call Bev Fox, who knows more about ferrets than most of the
vets in our area and is an excellent diagnostician.  Bev asked her a bunch
of questions, and found out she was giving the ferret the label recommended
dose of ferretone every day (3/4 teaspoon).
 
"Cut the ferretone with an equal amount of olive oil, and only give him a
couple drops a day" was Bev's recommendation.
 
Bev called the woman back last night to see how the ferret was doing.  The
woman was ecstatic.  He was eating better, had more energy and his fur was
growing back already.  And now that she thought about it, she realized that
when the ferret had been at the vet's for a while, it would start to get
better, and after being back home for a week, would get worse again.  Of
course, at the vet's he was not getting ferretone.
 
Now I can't say if it was vitamin A, but there is definitely something in
the ferretone that didn't agree with that ferret at the recommended dosage.
 
Linda Iroff
North Coast Ferret Shelter
Serving Northeast Ohio
http://www.oberlin.edu/~liroff/ncfs.html
[Posted in FML issue 1858]