Dear FML friends,
 
I need your advice and opinion regarding a behavior that I find non tipical
in my little baby Gigio.  I am non familiar to all changes in ferrets from
their childhood to adult or during different seasons in the year this is my
first experience.  Gigio is a male from MF siamese colour and 7 months old
about 1.3Kg weight.  The only child I have.  He already changed his general
mood once, when he was about 5 months he stopped being the little windmill
and little hurracaine that a young kit usually is and started to be more
calm, playful yes, but I noticed less war dances, much less dooking etc
I was told by a friend that this was normal and she also observed this in
her own fuzzies once in their life.  I never worried as Gigio had a good
appetite and very healthy and very naughty.  When he was 6 months old he
started sheeding season and in a couple of weeks got a wonderful winter
fur.  Those days I was very careful with possible blockages and Gigio
received his daily doses of petromalt.  Everything seemed fine with eating
and pooping etc...
 
At this point Gigio started to sleep more that usual, weaking up at 8 to
11 and maybe an hour around 13:00 then sleeping straight until 21:00 and
sleeping back again at 23:00 until next morning.  In average I think he
stays awake 6 hours only and 18 hours sleeping.  What is more he has been
loosing appetite, I have noticed that his stools are the same consistence
and looking as before but thiner I am sure as a direct consecuence of
eating less.  I would say he eats the half of what he used to eat, but he
still enjoys fruit as papaya and banana what he eats less is his normal
food a mixture of IAMS kitten food and Ferret Diet-Hartz, I have no changed
bags in the last month, so is the same food he ate before he loosed
appetite.  This is a recent fact (2-3 days) he has no losed weight yet.  He
is not loosing hair anymore, anyway I have tried again with hairball remedy
but this seems not to be the case.  When he is awake he is fine, very
curious and playful.  I am away most of the day but because I want him to
have enough play time I take him to my mothers house (Gigio knows her since
he was 2 months and recognizes her house as well as mine, so I am sure he
does not feel nostalgic when I take him there) at least 3 times a week,
there he can play in a nice garden, make holes in the soil and run, all
this in companion and supervised by my mother that tryes everything to keep
Gigio playing.  But when he wants to sleep he insist to get into the house
again and wants his bed for sleep.  When he is at my house, in the mornings
when im preparing to leave for work and in the nights he gets a lot of hugs
and kisses and some play, and I know he knows that I love him so much, with
this I would like to discart the possibility that he feels abandoned or too
lonely.  What is true is that mexican winter is not as american or european
winter but we don t have heating in the houses and the average temperature
during the day in this months is 15 Celsius (something like 66F).  The
question is: Do you think that he is going through a kind of lethargic
methabolism, normal during winter ?  If he keeps eating so few I will take
him to the vet, but here vets are not aknowledged about ferrets and most
probably the vet with such vague symptoms won t know what to do.  So if
anybody has suggestions or comments if this could be normal or not , please
mail them to me.
 
I appreciate infinitely your kind help.
Best regards,
Cathie and Gigio.
[Posted in FML issue 2877]