Steve and I have had ferrets for two decades in early June, and there is
something that confuses me.  Over those 20 years veterinary medicine for
ferrets has improved vastly.  The result is that the TYPICAL age at death
around here has bumped up markedly during that time.  Most of our's here
now die during the later part of their 7th year into the middle of their
8th year (some older and some younger) -- and remember that most of our's
are ones we take in due to medical problems, abuse, or deformities (the
last being the hardest group to care for usually) so we are NOT talking
about ones who started out with advantages.
 
We used to see late in the 6th year to early in the eighth year as the
usual clump, with some older and some younger.  Since the younger part of
the range is bumped up a full year that is like giving a human ten more
years of quality time.  This pattern is also seen with humans who have
also had the typical age range of death bumped up over the last few
generations due to improvements in medical care.
 
Here's what I don't get: since there have been such useful improvements
why do a few just plain refuse to utilize them?  (Yes, we have learned
things over the decades, but that is just part of providing medical care
and now-a-days with all the materials and resources out there it is easy
to learn compared to the past when they didn't exist.  Also, now there
are more vets who have studied ferrets and range of available vet text
books and videos about their health which means that the things we and
our vets had to learn the hard way can now be read about, giving people
who care enough to learn a distinct temporal short-cut to higher levels
of knowledge.  ) Remember: NOTHING replaces good and regular veterinary
care and utilizing the veterinary options available to you.
 
--Sukie (who recalls the years when we helped the vets we had then get
ferret-specialist contacts, info, and even bought them copies of the
first ferret vet text and the first tape that existed -- back when we had
to learn a lot of things by trial and error, and even by communicating
with researchers about drugs they'd developed that had never been tried
on ferrets)
 
For lots of excellent health information (best learned beforehand and
reviewed afterward):
http://geocities.com/sukieslist
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Ferret-Health-List
 
P.S.  Oh, and mode of age at death is the MOST COMMON age or age range
for passing away.  (This is as opposed to Mean which is the average, or
Median which is the halfway point.) We are very happy to see that lower
part of the mode range has gone up the equivalent of ten good human years
here.  Has anyone else run the numbers from records (as opposed to
estimates)?  Most of our adoptees are kits with problems -- have only had
two come in as adults with problems so we can do this accurately enough.
[Posted in FML issue 3763]