I didn't mean to open a can of worms!  I certainly could have expressed
myself better.  Please chalk it up to exhaustion and many distractions.
I never meant to imply that all early adrenal cases are from neglectful
homes--just that, because ferrets from neglectful homes have a higher
incidence of adrenal disease, there must be some risk factor that exists
more often in neglect cases.  If we can figure out which factors increase
the risk of adrenal disease, maybe we can reduce the risk.  Obviously,
some ferrets are predisposed to it for one reason or another.  I strongly
believe that there are likely to be many causes.  There's no single cause
of heart disease or lung cancer or breast cancer, three of the deadliest
diseases that affect humans.  But we can identify things that increase our
risk of getting it.
 
I'm sorry if I did offend anyone.  It was absolutely not my intent--but I
didn't express myself at all well.  I feel very strongly for anyone who has
had a young ferret with adrenal disease--it's shocking and unexpected.  Our
own adrenal case was 7 and that was hard enough to deal with.  I was just
thinking out loud in my last post.
 
As for the whole food mess: do I think diet has anything to do with the
incidence of adrenal disease?  Probably.  Feed a kid nothing but french
fries for 10 years and see how many diseases he gets.  Obviously, a
higher-quality diet leads to a lower likelihood of disease overall.  What's
a high-quality diet, in ferret terms?  *I don't claim to know.* Some things
are not good for ferrets, we all know that, but what constitutes a "good"
food, as in a balanced diet, is still pretty much unknown territory.  I
have a sneaking suspicion that the ideal ferret diet would probably consist
mainly of mice, with the occasional rabbit or chicken tossed in, and an
egg with shell every now and then.  Gee, sounds like Bob C's gravy,
multi-species version... :-)  My ferrets, however, eat kibble.  What I
consider "good" kibble, meaning I'm comfortable with the ingredient list.
They get chicken puree now and then, but essentially they eat kibble.  I
don't really want to get into the food debate; I just do believe that poor
diet is a risk factor for adrenal disease.  It could very well be a minor
one.  For all we know, lack of exercise could be the problem a lot of
ferrets have, or not enough natural light, or unclean drinking water over
long periods of time leading to various chemical imbalances.... or a
million other things.  Or none of them.  Just as some people will develop
tumors no matter what, some ferrets seem to be predisposed to adrenal
disease.
 
I did not intend to lay the blame on any of the owners around here.  I have
seen ferrets from neglectful homes, but unless I've personally seen how you
care for your ferrets and it's awful, I don't consider you neglectful.  If
you care enough to be here on the FML, I'll give you the benefit of the
doubt. :-)
 
I definitely agree that we need more research... but who's doing it?
The first part of researching something is coming up with hypotheses to
test--otherwise you don't know what data to gather.  And coming up with
hypotheses is, essentially, thinking out loud.  :-)
 
Jen and the Crazy Business
http://home.maine.rr.com/tesseract
[Posted in FML issue 3100]