We just went through a 3 week course of a flu-like illness.  Diarrhea - dark
forest green and watery seedy, butterscotch pudding color and consistency;
Vomiting - food colored and minor episodes; Fever; Dehydration.
 
For the fever I finely ground a baby aspirin and mixed with 4 cc's of water
and dosed 1/2 cc per ferret.  This relieved the fever.  Charlies was so high
I used a cool sheet to lay her on till the aspirin kicked in.  I also
hydrated her with cool, not cold, pedialyte.
 
For the dehydration we fed our recipe with added electrolytes 3 times a day
and another feeding of about 20 cc's of pedialyte only.  For the ones that
wouldn't eat the regular recipe I added 1/4 teaspoon of sweetened condensed
milk to their serving.  Last night Rikkie ate two servings at one feeding.
 
For vomiting we used childrens Mylanta.  Peach syrup from a can of peaches
in heavy syrup will work too.
 
For diarrhea we gave 1/2 cc of kaopectate as needed and I added slippery elm
bark to the recipe.
 
The course of the illness ran about 3 weeks.  Symptoms were different in
some.  Skat had a very stuffy nose and I used a warm wash cloth, steam and
childrens saline nose drops to clear his head.  When ferrets get stuffy they
normally won't eat because they can't smell the food.  We'd start him on the
recipe and he'd go to town.  :-)
 
It seems this or a similar flu-type illness is going around.
 
Hugs to all. tle
[Posted in FML issue 2350]