Dear Cynthia:
 
>If corn is bad for them then way do these companys put it in thier food?
 
There has been a lot of traffic on the FML recently about corn products,
and most people look at it the wrong way.  It is not that corn is a poison,
and that giving corn products to ferrets or domestic animals necessarily is
going to result in disease in every individual.  It has been associated
with the formation of uroliths in a number of ferrets, but this is only a
small fraction of the total number of ferrets that eat chow high in corn
products, and it is likely that these animals have some error of metabolism
that resulted in urolith formation.  The high level of corn may have
contributed, but it is likely that these animals may have developed them
anyway.
 
Corn actually adds little to a ferret's diet except bulk.  Corn has little
nutritive value, and generally passes undigested.  It provides texture to
food which aids in palatability.
 
Low quality animal feeds have higher levels of corn in them than higher
quality.  If corn is the first ingredient in the list of ingredients,
then you can probably do better.
 
But corn isn't poison, and having it in a ration is not equivalent to mass
poisoning of animals.  The higher the overall level, in general, the lower
the quality of the feed.  If you want to make sure your ferrets are eating
the best ration, make suer that the prime ingredients are not corn or other
vegetable products.
 
With kindest regards,
Bruce Williams, DVM
[Posted in FML issue 3273]