Since there seems to be little activity here, I thought I'd throw something
else out.  Upon my recommendation, a friend bought a ferret for her mother.
Of course, she loves the little guy and really wants to provide the best
care possible.  She took him to a nearby vet right away for a checkup and
he offered to declaw the 10 week old baby.  Please, nobody else should
consider doing this.  Those are their toes.  You will have some appreciation
of that if, when clipping their nails, you accidentally cut into the blood
vessel that is visible through the nail.  It gives them great pain.  You
should, however, keep their nails cut.  Hence the Dudley method.  Nail
cutting is a two person job.  I initially tried holding their paws while
my wife used ordinary nail clippers (which are fine if sharp).  Didn't work.
They squirmed no matter how they were held, until..... I tried the ferret
mother trick of holding them by the scruff of their neck.  They became
docile and amenable to all sorts of indignities.  We do give support to
their hind quarters and clip quickly to minimize the possibility of lack
of oxygen.  I have heard that their windpipes are protected such that
they can very nearly rotate their heads 180 degrees with no problem.  For
whatever its worth, this works and does no harm.  We give them a few drops
of linatone after the clipping to salve our conscious'.  Anyway, I digress.
 
[DECLAW?  Yipes! Never tried the scruff of the neck trick for clipping nails.
When picked up by the scruff, our ferrets do go limp, but they do NOT like
it.  We get hissed at and attacked after we let go.  We do it this way: my wife
sits in a chair holding the ferret.  She then wets a finger with linotone,
and offers it to the ferret, in such a way that the ferret lies on its
back on my wife's lap.  I then use the clippers.  Have very little difficulty
with this - our ferrets like linotone so much that we could practically
amputate their legs and they wouldn't notice.  Though, we sometimes have
a minor tussle with the hind feet.  I've gotten to the point where I can
do this all by myself, with linatone on my left baby finger, the forefinger
and thumb holding the paw, and the right hand is wielding the clippers.
Little awkward, but doable.]
 
There are some Vets out there that pretend to know about ferrets and think
they are just like cats.
 
[Should be noted: a summary article on Ferrets in a Vet Journal *does* say
"Treat as for cats except where indicated otherwise", and then goes on
to indicate the "otherwises".  One of these days I should type the article
in and post it.]
 
Not so.  Some injections for cats (live rabies
vaccine for example) are deadly to ferrets.  Our vet, Dr. Knipling at the
hayfield animal hospital, has ferrets himself and thus has been interested
in finding out as much as possible.  (This is in Alexandria, Va by the way)
We could network these kinds of information and steer fellow ferret owners
toward the vets that have made the effort to learn about ferrets.  New
subject.  I posted the name of a company that specialized in ferret
products and offered a catalog about 10 issues ago (Chris?).  One of the
 
[Do you want me to repost the catalog?]
 
items was ferret shampoo that removed the yellow stain from ferret coats.
Our male, Tut, is scented and had quite a yellow tinge.  We bought the
stuff, used it, and it worked beautifully.  He is now quite the ladies
ferret (;}.  Just thought you'd like to know.  There Chris, does that
help with your lack of bandwidth?
 
Scott (signature minimalist) Dudley
                                                                          
[Posted in FML 0019]