>From:    Judy Cooke <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Last chance to get the 'Peaches' 2003 International Ferret Symposium
>Offical Tee Shirt!!  This is the last time long-sleeved tees, sweatshirts
>and hooded sweatshirts will be offered!  Cold weather is coming...order
>your shirts now!!...
>... HOODED Sweatshirt S, M, L, XL $30
>2X & 3X $31...
>Orders must be received by Friday Oct 24th!
 
We got this and the ferrets LOVE it.  We love it, too, but it has a
marvelous hand warming tube which the ferrets love to sit in when
cuddling us, and at the vet's is is a PERFECT place for a ferret to
go to relax and feel loved and safe again after something awful (like
getting a neck shaved prior to taking blood).  Having that snuggly tube
handy right against me was an absolutely wonderful help on our last vet
visit -- more so than I had expected -- and I plan to be in the sweat
shirt for a number of future vet visits.  Our ferrets LOVE our vet but
they sure hate being shaved...
 
You can see the shirt design at
http://www.ferretcongress.org
 
It's a black shirt, too, which is wonderful for me.  (Okay, I've always
enjoyed wearing black but age has also lent me some pounds...)
 
Have you ever had one of those hand warming tubes with the tip of a nose
projecting from one end and a tail from the other, only to have a flip
take place right next to your abdomen and the sides reverse?
 
Carol, the folks at Pretty Bird found out what the types and proportions
of different fats are in mice and worked to duplicate that distribution
or types in proportion.  I have never read that ferrets can not utilize
fat sources from vegetable origins that I can recall, but too much
polyunsaturated oil (unlike saturated and monosaturated) will cause
nutritional disease in them.  (See the nutrition section of _Biology
and Diseases of the Ferret_.)
 
One of the humans here is actually allergic to one of the lesser
ingredients in the new version of their food so we won't be able to feed
it.  It's a very rare type of allergy, though.  Meanwhile, we are happily
adding the earlier version to our food mix so all the ferrets are happy.
[Posted in FML issue 4305]