>This is an international list.  I'd like very much to see those other
>ideas from other countries, but the harshness on this forum keeps them
>as lurkers.  And that is so counterproductive and against the whole
>spirit in which this list...
 
Me, too!  I'd like to see more input from other countries.  I mean, how
many people here know about the work of the French biology professor
Thierry Lode who knows more about polecats than likely any 50 to 100 of
us combined?  How many know that before there was work done on rabies
virus shedding among ferrets in both France and Germany years before the
work done here?
 
There are some strong similarities between the experiences which ferrets
folks here in the U.S. had with the ones in some of the European reports:
low levels of (or lack symptoms of) insulinoma and of adrenal neoplasias.
WHY?  Are these valid impressions?  If so, it possibly wasn't food (LOL!)
since pretty well everyone I knew back then (who didn't run into these
illnesses or rarely did) or heard form since used cheap grocery store cat
foods and table scraps, which differed from the common British diets
reported back then of rabbit carcasses, or milk and bread, or a combo.
That is one thing that makes ears prick up and wonder if there is more
going on than the simple solution many folks desire.
 
Heck, since the body does not treat complex starches the same way as it
treats sugars (which is why diet controlled diabetics like my dad eat
bread but not candy...) it may even be that some starches are safer
for ferrets BECAUSE they are quite indigestible before they emerge in
feces -- that using alternative starches that are processed faster or
cooking starches at high temps (making them more accessible) could be
counter-productive.  We don't know.  The past experiences, though,
indicate that there may be excellent reasons to not generalize about
starches.  If some of the current kibbles do relate in testing to
increased rates of insulinoma it would be interesting to know if other
starches or starches NOT cooked at high temps fail to provide similar
risks.  After all, it might be an easily fixed problem if the problem
even exists.  Right there is an important reason for thinking about what
was done then.
 
What if the genetic distribution of the population changed a lot in
response to the demand for fancies (Duh -- that's pretty easy to see...)?
Perhaps that holds some important visual clues for which individuals or
breeding populations could be more pone to certain health problems.
 
What if the past similarities and the changes combined with knowledge
of the way ferrets were fed here then indicates that for some medical
problems attention should be shifted away from diet and concentrate
instead on ferret contagious illnesses?  Heck, one recent topic under
discussion elsewhere is how folks hope to see a decrease in IBD and a
smaller one in lymphoma/lymphosarcoma when there finally is a vaccine for
ECE.  There is a strongly indicated relationship of IBD (which barely
existed in the pet ferret community before ECE) with ECE, and IBD is a
known factor that leads to some cases of lympho.  But what if that or
other viruses may trigger some of the other common problems seen?  The
timing is pretty close, though I am not sure or what was quite when so
there may have been increasing rates of things like adrenal neoplasia
before ECE appeared or spread much.  May not mean anything, in other
words, but perhaps it can't be eliminated out of hand.  A viral premise
could also be among the possible hypotheses which could explain why some
some areas of Europe are seeing more of some of the common problems than
others.  I keep hoping that maybe when there finally is an ECE vaccine
that perhaps we'll also get some added bonuses in improved health.  It's
a long-shot, but even by itself an ECE vaccine will be an eventual
treasure.  Ask anyone who has lost one to ECE or had one suffer with IBD,
or... (Oh, and for those who don't know, there are strong indications
that some lympho cases have a viral trigger in ferrets.)
 
Anyway, the points are that knowing about differences in time as well
as in geography can be useful, and finding out how these differences vary
or varied can also be useful, and also that there certainly is use in
discussing hypotheses while folks just remember that they are hypotheses.
Heck, we provide a lot of true darkness for our ferrets based upon a
hypothesis.  May not pan out, but we have decided that it is worth it.
 
So, you NON-Yanks!   PLEASE, SPEAK UP!   Ditto more who had ferrets
in the family 15, 20, 30 years ago...
[Posted in FML issue 3961]