To Heike Lewis:
 
>After my two ferrets had diarrhea for a week, and it didn't seem to get
>any better, I called my vet and asked for his help. He asked me for some
>stool samples and after checking them, he said that he could not find any
>of the bacteria he can check for in his clinic, but that he was pretty
>sure that it might be salmonella poisoning.
 
    Heike - I would be very interested in finding what happened in this
case.  Salmonella is very uncommon in ferrets, and generally associated with
the feeding of raw meat.  Affected animals are very sick - run high fevers,
profuse bloody diarrhea, etc.  I've never seen a case of Salmonella
infection in ferrets, myself.
 
>So what happened? Could it maybe be their regular dry cat food?
 
    No, Salmonella doesn't grow in dry cat food.  The food would have to
have been contaminated by a carrier of Salmonella.  Most cases of Salmonella
in humans are passed by oral-fecal contact with outher human - usually
unclean food prepartation.  Your ferrets would probably have had to come in
contact with another animal with Salmonella to get it.
 
    Without a positive culture, I wouldn't even consider Salmonella in a
ferret with diarrhea.  Let's wait until the culture comes back before we
start discussing this one on the FML....
 
Bruce Williams, DVM, DACVP
Dept. of Vet Path, AFIP
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Chief Pathologist, AccuPath
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[Posted in FML issue 1285]