To Jeff Hazel & David Childress:
 
In general, you're going to find a greater incidence of adrenal and other
early killers, as well as congenital defects, in lines that are highly
inbred.  From all we've heard, that includes both Path Valley and Marshall
Farms, but it also includes a number of less than ethical private breeders.
 According to Dr. Susan Brown DVM of Chicago, the gene pool in Europe is less
inbred, and ferrets live longer there.
 
David:
 
>God forbid that I should have to take Path Valley up on their 1-yr
guarantee against defects<
 
I don't guess any commercial breeder would let a *returned* animal live out
its life in quiet pasture... would probably just be destroyed.  Please don't
even consider it: there are good no-kill shelters that will take the ferret
off your hands if you feel you cannot keep it.
 
To Lawrence Roberts:
 
 >Having said that, in the '60s research showed that N.Z. had the highest
population of feral ferrets in the world - I can't find any numbers though -
so if they do have B-T.B. they could have an impact.<
 
I'm sure a lot of us are wondering what you mean by "feral ferrets."  The
assumption in the US has long been that our domestic ferret cannot live in
the wild, and there are no known feral colonies here.  At the same time, both
in Canada and Europe, there are closely related weasels, sometimes also known
as ferrets, that are found in nature and are sometimes hybridized with the
domestic version.
 
Is there any way you can find out *precisely* the species name of the ferret
that occurs ferally in N.Z.?
 
--Howard Davis
[Posted in FML issue 1064]