Mother nature makes mistakes, but she also erases most of them.  We
domesticated the ferret, but still Mother Nature can make mistakes,
problem is we do not give her the chance to rectify her mistakes.
 
If ferrets were wild animals and a ferret was born with a genetic fault,
lets say a white stripe on his head.  He would leave the nest when old
enough and would mate with a ferret from another nest; the gene would
then be filtered out.  If he was born with a stripe on the head and was
deaf he would not live long enough to reproduce.  Thus the faulty gene
is erased.
 
But we second had players of nature seem to want to reproduce this
mistake and don't think of the consequences to the animal.
 
This is a mistake of mother nature, she doesn't make them often, so to
strengthen the mistake more often than not it is necessary to breed
siblings to strengthen the faulty gene.  But if this faulty gene is also
attached to a secondary or unseen mistake, then we also strengthen this
unseen gene.  Simple proof that the genes are connected, a breeder in
Holland breed two different lines of blaze, neither line had any deafness
in their history, but breeding these two ferrets did produced deaf
ferrets.  If you should happen to discover that, lets say, the silver
mitts had a higher percentage of heart problems, you could probably
connect it to the color breeding.  That is not too say they all have
heart problems, but that the initial breeding ferrets of the color silver
mitt had a heart problem and because of inbreeding for the color, you
have unknowingly also strengthened the heart problems.  So if we just
loved the strange colors when and if they come allong and let Mother
Nature do her work, then I'm sure we would see a lot less problems in
ferrets.
 
 
Ferrets in Holland are not neutered until at least six months for a male
and only when they come into season for a female.  We do get a lot of
Adrenal and insulinoma in Holland, but we seldom see it before a ferret
has reached the age of five or six years old.  We also advise people to
try to give their ferrets a more natural light/dark cycle.  And once
again breeding and hereditary factors, I'm sure do play a roll.
 
 
Melody, if your ferret has insulinoma I presume he is being fed extra
soft meals, try making just the amount you know he will eat and mix the
medication in it, one of my ferrets get a very bitter medicine for her
heart, I give her duck soup twice a day and she doesn't even seem to
notice that the medicine is in it.
 
Stephenie SDF
[Posted in FML issue 4668]