While awaiting the return of the next series of Ad Libitum posts from
one of my reviewers (he had a death in the family), I'll take a moment
to answer a few questions the ad libitum series has generated.
 
Q: "If a [ad libitum, kibble] diet is so bad for ferrets, why has it been
    used in America for so long?"
 
A: Because Americans are know-it-all Yankees with a superior attitude?
   Relax, I'm just "Yanking" your chain...
 
I've been asking that question for quite some time, and I have no
provable answer (as yet!).  However, I do have a hypothesis that probably
has value.
 
I think it is an historic accident, influenced by 1) a desire to promote
ferrets as pets, 2) a desire to move away from the historic view of
working ferrets as bloodthirsty, and 3) highly correlated to the origin
of pet ferrets in USA laboratories.  The first two points might be
subsumed within a single desire: how better to show ferrets are as good
a pet as a cat than by showing they can be fed like cats?  When people
objected to ferrets as pets, it was an easy matter to say, "They eat the
same food as cats." A careful reading of pet ferret books from the late
1970s through the 1980s, show MANY statements illustrating diet must have
be a paramount concern at the time, and there is an almost universal
desire to show ferrets can be fed foods common to other pets, including
cats and dogs.
 
Nonetheless, I think the basic concepts of what we feed our ferrets was
inherited more from the laboratory than we give credit for.  Most early
ferrets were rescued from labs or purchased directly from ferret farms
breeding for laboratory purposes.  The diet of lab animals, especially
small, short-lived animals like rodents, ferrets, small primates, etc.,
was nearly always a dry food fed ad libitum.  Researchers, unaware of
the problems of overnutrition (especially on carcinogenesis), didn't
care much about diet and nutrition, because most ferrets were scheduled
for sacrifice within a short period of time.  I suspect that as ferrets
were moved from the lab to the home, with them came the baggage of
laboratory confinement, including caging, lack of nesting boxes, dry,
carbohydrate-rich diet fed ad libitum, and various exploratory and
enrichment constraints.
 
The first real book suggesting ferrets make good pets was published in
1977; 25 years ago.  Several books were rapidly published soon after, and
they took one of two ferret-care strategies: treat them like in England,
or threat them like in USA laboratories.  The later won the "pet-care"
war, and we are now sorting out that baggage.  Were the old ideas wrong?
Not at the time (I refuse to judge yesterday's standards by todays
values).  But that doesn't mean we should ignore the need to question and
improve.  Ferrets deserve no less.
 
Bob C
[Posted in FML issue 3972]