Dale's vet suggests that the practice of spaying and neutering at a very
early age may be the cause of adrenal disease.  Well, our shelter has quite
a few ferrets that went the whole six months or more before spay/neuter and
they have developed adrenal disease at the same rate as those
spayed/neutered young.  Kind of blows the theory.
 
My own personal speculation is that because ferrets simply suffer from a
naturally short lifespan, like humans, they develop cancers at mid and late
life.  This in a ferret is 4-5 years.  The same thing happens with the wild
black-footed ferrets.  In the wild they rarely live beyond 4 years of age--
that's when they start to slow down and thus become lunch for a faster
predator.  Now that many have been kept in captive breeding programs for
their entire lives and have lived to be 8, 9 and even 10 years old, they
also often die of cancers.  Not something which normally causes death in
the wild.
 
Of course, we do see young ferrets develop cancers, too.  And we see human
children also develop cancer, so it isn't always age-related.  But
generally it is a disease of the aging process
 
Ferret Rescue of the Western States, Colorado Springs
[Posted in FML issue 2678]