Recently, there were two interesting long articles in Science News which
may interest a number of the people here.  They are from a human
perspective but the mechanisms involved are so general that if they wind up
holding as being more than just hypotheses after further research is done
then they would certainly have ferret implications.  One article was within
the last half year if memory serves and it was on the possibility that
living day-to-day in an overly clean environment might actually prevent
the immune system from doing the work it needs to do to stay healthy and
thereby throw it for a loop, also that it might prevent some useful forms
of diseases or parasites from setting up house in the body and thus make
it more vulnerable for worse illnesses.  One health difficulty thought to
possibly be increased in occurrence (not in degree) by too clean a home is
allergies, another is GI tract vulnerability (some diseases and parasites
are thought to possibly either modify their local environment or so much
stimulate the immune system to respond locally that worse things can't
grow there -- hence a preliminary study (smaller than 50 participants --
obviously still hypothetical and which still could be nothing more than
coincidence) which was a very successful trial in which safe parasitic
worms markedly decreased some very severe intestinal woes.  Also, being
considered in relation to Helicobacter pylori (which sheep and humans have,
with humans having in very high numbers but only a few percent ever have
severe responses) -- it is being considered that the bacterium might help
protect against more severe bacterial illnesses and protecting against
cancers of the upper stomach and esophagus, although it is also considered
to play a role in increasing cancers of the lower stomach and mucusa (trade
off -- possibly with one type decreasing as the disease decreases but the
other concurrently increasing after a 20 year lag for enough damage to
occur).  Whether these concepts will pan out and then could carry over to
ferret's Helicobacter species I just don't know but these bacteria are in
the same genus.  The Helicobacter article is a separate one from the "too
clean" article and is in the current Science News, volume 156 so you might
want to go to that website to read it.
 
Anyway, it might be food for thought, or raise an area of current new
work which you might want to follow, or simply make you feel better
if you don't always get to ferret laundry quite as fast as you need
to not feel guilty.  The guilty feeling might be inappropriate.
 
I am SO snowed under with obligations right now.  Forgive me for being
brief.  I do NOT have time to look up the other SN article, and I do NOT
have time to copy or look up a blasted thing, etc.
 
[Moderator's note: The Helicobacter article in volume 156 is at
http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc99/10_9_99/bob1.htm         BIG]
[Posted in FML issue 2835]