Hello everybody,
 
I have a serious problem with one of my four ferrets.  I wrote to the
mailing list before concerning a problem with Antha's tail.  She had lost
all of her hair on her tail (rat tail) and had the familiar black heads on
it too.  Concerned, i wrote to the mailing list asking for comments, i got a
lot of answers telling me that this was a familiar problem and not to worry.
I also recently read about this on the mailing list too.  But since then,
Antha's problems have gotten worse!  The skin on her tail started to get
very dry, i put cream on it but nothing worked.  It then started to get very
red and irritated.  Her tail is now bloody, infected and seems to bother her
a lot (painful)!!  She licks at it, shakes it in the cage etc..
 
We went to see our vet who was familiar with Antha's problem, and he told us
he had never seen such a case.  The hair missing on the tail was familiar,
but this he did not know what to do about.  I got kind of worried.  He gave
us some antibiotics (Baytril and Prednisone) to try to get the swealing down
and the infection under control.  He told us to keep in touch and inform him
about the results.  He suggested cream but Antha would not stop licking at
the tail with this stuff on it, but this is still an option.  Our vet said
that the last option would be to cut her tail off!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is not something i wan't to do, but we got to find something because
this hurts her very much.  The vet is not sure that the antibiotics are
going to work either.
 
I would deeply appreciate any suggestions that i could bring to my vet.  So,
to the vets out there and anybody that had this problem before ..  help..
 
Sincerly, Mireille
Antha, Chavez, Lucy and Molly
[Posted in FML issue 1946]