Harry wrote:
>HOW TO MAKE CHANGE!!  Is to not bash MF but rather to change the laws.  An
>example would be that ferrets may not be purchased by an animal broker or
>pet store that are less than 10 weeks old.  Then go on to revoke the
>license of any animal broker or store that purchases any ferret younger
>than 10 weeks.  On the state level, you must find member(s) of your state
>legislatures that are vets, educate them about ferrets, then ask them to
>submitt legislation to make it illegal to posess or own ferrets less that
>10 weeks old.  Hopefully you can quietly get this passed and signed by
>your governor.  You should keep what you are doing at a very low profile,
>as the animal brokers, pet stores, and MF will spend a lot more than you
>can to change the laws in your state.
 
Great points!  It is essential that any higher standards apply to ALL the
competing farms; otherwise an equal or worse one will just replace the
original -- no matter which farm the original is.  Folks have to be fair
and even-handed, not find scape-goats.
 
Harry is also right that Bill Gruber NAILED exactly how this has
progressed.  A person doesn't even have to read the posts of last week
and this week.  Just read ANY of the times this has come up (every few
months) and it is exactly the same.  Is it any wonder that a LOT of
people don't even read posts on the topic any longer?
 
Ferret with pulmonary edema: A few years back Meeteetse survived pneumonia
and pleurosy, but we got lucky.  She had almost no symptoms at all.  We
took her in on an emergency basis because she had a slight cough that day
which did not go away, and the (non-ferret) vet who handled her emergency
didn't hear anything in her chest but was told by the ferret specialist
who was there but busy with another emergency, that we really know our
individuals and ferrets in general, so she agreed to x-ray her.  There
was so much edema that they couldn't even tell what was going on till
they did an emergency ultrasound the next morning, but heavy-duty multiple
antibiotics were begun right away.  She got lucky.
 
It can be hard to tell when they have this sort of problem even if it's
really bad; sometimes they show almost no symptoms, even to folks with
long ferret experience,or to vets.
 
There are other causes of pulmonary edema that are more common, including
cardiomyopathy, kidney disease, and (less commonly) liver disease.
Important note: vets who are not used to ferrets can freak at ferret liver
values, but all of those except bilirubin are easily thrown off in ferrets
by not eating enough.
 
>FYI- 2 years ago I was in a local pet store to do a follow up on a male
>prolapsed rectum baby Marshall farms ferret.  I asked the pet store owner
>what Marshalls had said.  He wanted them to pay for the surgery to be done
>on the little guy.  Well, Marshall farms reaction was.......PUT THE BABY
>IN THE FREEZER AND THEY WOULD SHIP HIM A REPLACEMENT ON HIS NEXT ORDER!!!!
>The pet store owner was disgusted.  He gave custody of the ferret to his
>vet, the surgery was done and the vet staff found him a home.
 
Huh?  At that same exact time people were getting refunds, treatment
payment, or free supplies for this, for deafness, etc.  Those successful
resolution letters have been in the FML a number of times in relation to
an assortment of breeders.  The folks who had it turn out right contacted
MF themselves.  Never in a number of years did the ones with whom I
have spoken find themselves asked to do anything like what the petstore
person told you.  I did speak with a friend who had a newly-employed MF
receptionist brush her off, but when she wrote to their VP for Customer
Service he straightened everything out.  I suspect that there was a
miscommunication between the pet store person and the MF person, and the
MF person thought that they had a dead one there and wanted the store to
save it for necropsy in case a descenting had been botched (though not
for pathology since you can't do pathology on a frozen ferret due to burst
cells).  Anyone who encounters such a problem should contact the breeders
themselves directly!  If you look in the archives you'll find MANY people
over the years who had such encounters with any breeders (except unknowns)
turn out fine.  (Oh, another possibility is that the pet store contacted
the distributor rather than the breeder -- some of those are not
up-to-par, and some do mixed loads, and follow other bad practises.)
 
BTW, I think that their spaying and altering age is actually around 4
weeks; which was the age that PV neutered three of our's, according to
what we were told when there.  Years ago one of the ones we brought home
from there needed that at 5 weeks and they removed her stitches as we
watched beforehand.  Think that is also the age Triple F does.  Some vets
have said that complication of early neuterings are lower than those of
later ones; have heard of vets who said the opposite, too, so it's not a
cut-and-dry situation.  Personally, I'd like to see the multiple farms
that descent stop doing so, since that has more chance of going wrong.
 
In general, for any of the farms people have typically reported good
follow-ups when they contacted the places themselves, and when a new
lower-level employee has botched a call then a letter sent to the "VP of
Customer Service" at the address on the warranty papers which come with
purchase form any reputable store, will straighten it all out, regardless
of farm.  NEVER trust a store or distributor to do this for you!  That
backfires.
 
You can also avoid any middlemen messing things up for you by dealing
directly with reputable small breeders, but BEST OF ALL you can adopt
from shelters!
[Posted in FML issue 3623]