Our two newest ferrets, Tia and Gretchen, are both underweight.  Tia isn't
really very badly off -- her bones are just more prominent than I'd like
and she sleeps a lot more than our other ferrets (of course, she's three
and the others are all much younger).  We had Dr. Bock look at her when
she was in for her rabies shot and he advised giving her NutriCal or
NutriStat for three weeks and then bringing her back in when Gretchen goes
in for her rabies shot to be reweighed (she weighed in at 1 lb 2 oz).
Problem is, she doesn't like NutriStat, and my attempt at Duck Soup turned
out to be pretty disgusting.  She will lick at vanilla Ensure, but just a
tiny bit and I don't know how much it's really increasing her caloric
intake.  WE do plan to put our ferrets on a half-Totally Ferret and
half-Iams Lamb and Rice diet in about a week, rather than half-Iams KItten
and half-Iams Lamb and Rice, so that should help her out, I suppose.
 
On to problem number two, which is much more serious.  Gretchen, who we've
had for about two and a half weeks, suddenly started looking EXTREMELY
thin.  (When HOney, our first ferret, died of Lymphasarcoma, we noticed
with him that he just suddenly got thin in the last week of his life
also.)  Well, we think it's that we don't feed our ferrets whatever she
was fed, we don't know what she was originally fed, don't know how to make
her eat what we feed, and all we know is that she likes bananas.  So we
picked up some banana-flavored Ensure for her.  Again, she licks at it and
seems to like it, but doesn't really eat much.  She won't touch anything
else -- I've even tried dipping pieces of the cat food in the Ensure and
letting her lick it, trying to get her used to the flavor.  She'll lick it
but won't eat it.
 
After a couple attempts at force-feeding both of them, Kirk told me to
just let them drink the Ensure when they want too, since neither of them
seem to be in any health danger at the moment -- he said the force-feeding
would just make them hate me and doesn't think it's really necessary yet.
I would like some advice though -- Tia isn't really in any danger, but
Gretchen can't survive on bananas and banana-flavored Ensure.
 
Michelle
 
--
Meet my pets.  The ferrets (Taz, Coffee, Daphne, Tia and Gretchen), the
gerbils (31 permanent residents and various babies), the zebra mouse
(Racer), the rats (five of them), the budgie (Sky), the cockatiel (Summer),
and the fish (various).
[Posted in FML issue 1274]