If you carefully watch your ferret eating its kibbled dinner, you will
notice that it picks up a piece, then turns its head slightly to the side to
bring the piece to the middle teeth.  It crunches it a few times, swallows,
and repeats the process.  What the ferret is doing is to cut the kibble
into small pieces using the carnasials, or cutting molars.  The pieces are
further broken into tiner bits using the tiny rear molars.  Because the
ferrets molars are so small, the major part of grinding the kibble is left
to the cutting teeth, which are ill prepared for the task.
 
Consider the effects of a kibbled diet on the teeth.  Kibble is normally
baked to about 8-12% water--10% is about average.  When you consider the
enamel in your teeth is 3% water and dry bone is about 7%, then 10% isn't
much.  While I haven't found any literature that rates the hardness of the
kibble, from experience I can say its pretty hard, harder than some smaller
bones.  This is often touted as a "plus;" because kibble is so crunchy, it
helps scrape the tartar off the teeth.  The problem is, polecats and ferrets
don't subsist on a diet of bones, and they do not have the bone crunching
teeth found in the mouths of bone scavengers such as hyenas.  Remember what
polecats eat?  We are talking small tiny bones, easily chewed, almost always
less than a half inch in diameter, not big ol' elk bones.  Ferret teeth are
not designed for much chewing; they are designed to *cut* meat, tendon and
bone.  They do have a small molar hidden behind the last cutting teeth.  The
lower one is about the size of the head of a pin, and in the upper jaw its
a little bit smaller than 1/8 by 1/4 inch (look at the capital "O" on your
keyboard).
 
Eating hard kibble does three things (and I have dozens of skulls to prove
it).  First, it wears down the back molars to the roots.  Second, it wears
down the carnasials to flattened stubs.  Third, it forces grain paste
(kibble n bits) under the gumline, causing inflamation on the surface of the
bone.  (I can't show you the pictures here, but Modern Ferret is likely to
publish a digest of this series, and I *will* supply photos of all three
dental problems).  Yes, ferret teeth are designed to cut bone, but not *all*
the time.  Polecats and feral ferrets have pretty clean teeth, because the
animal tissues (fur, bone, tough skin) polish and clean the teeth (those
that have bad teeth fall into the ranks of garbage eaters, and have teeth as
well kept as in bears, raccoons, and people who chew tobacco.  Try and get
that image out of your mind).
 
Grains (because of the albumin) are as sticky as raisins, and small
particles work their way under the gumline with each bite.  This causes the
gumline to receed, and the reactive changes of the bone cause the teeth to
loosen.  The food particles promote bacterial tooth decay, given footholds
by the deep scratches on the teeth caused by the hard kibble particles as
well as by the sticky kibble paste.  But wait, you say, aren't raisins full
of sugar?  How is that similar to kibble?  Because kibble is probably 40-60%
carbohydrates, mostly starches.  You don't realize this because it isn't
normally listed in the analysis on the side of the package.  Add up the
listed analysis and subtract from 100, and you have a large percentage of
"unknown and unlisted." This is primarily plant starches and sugar.  Take
one part starch, add a part ferret slobber, and you have instant sugar.  Mix
this with a sticky kibble paste and you now have the makings for a dental
nightmare; just ask any dental pathologist looking at agricultural-era teeth
prior to the Toothbrush Age.
 
After comparing polecat to feral ferret to pet ferret skulls for the last
year, I have almost a 100% identification rate for the pet ferrets based on
nothing more than tooth wear and decay.  One person from Britain donated a
pet ferret skeleton to me, and I could not separate it from the feral
ferrets nor the polecats based on tooth wear.  That pet ferret was actually
a working ferret, and ate mostly rabbit for the 12 years it was alive.  I
have about 20 pet ferret skeletons donated by USA pet owners, and, with a
few exceptions, the teeth and surrounding bone are in horrific shape; dental
abscesses, cavities, ground-down teeth and reactive bone surfaces are the
norm.
 
Softening kibble with water or broth will prevent the wear to the tooth, but
will not prevent the stuff from sticking to the teeth or getting under the
gums.  To get rid of that, you need a tooth scraper and lots of bandaids.
Of course, you could use of nature's dental floss; bone and fur.  Bone and
fur?  Aren't these bad for ferrets to eat?  Well, think about it.  Remember
what polecats eat?  While they may not completely consume the entire carcass
during each feeding, they do ingest quite a sizable amount of feathers and
fur during normal eating.  This is so common that one of the ways zoologists
can tell what polecats eat is by looking at the bits of (washed) fur and
feathers under a microscope and matching them to known specimens.  The other
way is to look at the small pieces of bone to make species identifications.
 
This means that in wild polecats and feral ferrets, bone and fur are a
typical part of the diet.  So typical that the bulk of the poop *is* bone
and fur.  Yet these guys seem to do fine.  So why the idea that fur and bone
are bad for ferrets?  The problem with fur probably relates to furballs,
and the danger of plugged intestines they can cause.  And this is indeed a
potientially serious problem.  The problem is not so much the fur as it is
the rest of the diet.  If you swallow fur and kibble paste, the paste tends
to push through leaving the fur behind, which can ball up and plug things
not meant to be plugged.  In animals subsisting on a natural diet, parts of
the carcass, including partially digested skin, tendons and bone, tend to
help push the fur along the digestive tract.  Kibble paste has very little
undigested bulk, and the particle size of the fiber is microscopic, so it
isn't very helpful in moving the fur down the road.
 
Can fur have some sort of biological advantage for the ferret?  Some
evidence seems to indicate that the fur acts like thousands of minature
brushes, sweeping the deep valleys of the intestinal tract clean of bacteria
and other nasties.  While just a hypothesis, it has yet to be disproven.  If
you compare the idea to current research in many other animals, including
people, the idea that undigested bulk increases the intestinal health of
the individual has a lot of support.
 
Bob C and 20 MO Erudite Earbiters
[Posted in FML issue 2313]