OK, I've had one of my girls on antibiotics for 5 weeks now, thinking
she had helicobacter/ulcers like my boy who died last summer... She got
back up to regular weight with the soft gravy I mixed the meds into,
and seemed to be recovering at first, but after five weeks she's still
grinding her teeth. It seems like 5 weeks of meds should have gotten
rid of that. Usually, the last week or two of any antibiotic run, the
illness is gone, and you're just continuing it to make SURE the infection
is knocked out.
So I started thinking it might be a bad tooth... I popped a piece of soft
food into her mouth last night, and sure enough, she wouldn't eat it.
She ran around on the table with the food in her mouth, found a place to
drop it, and then stood and ground her teeth *really* badly. She didn't
even try to chew it. So eating is causing pain in her *mouth* rather
than her stomach.
So I looked at her teeth (kicking myself, why hadn't I checked earlier?).
The roof of her mouth looked fine, tongue looked normal, and none of her
teeth looked cracked, broken, uneven or even yellowed. However, one of
her molars has a large tartar deposit on it. Is it possible for tartar
build-up to cause enough tooth/gum irritation *by itself* to make a
ferret stop eating? Or is it likely there is a problem with one of the
teeth that you couldn't see without x-rays?
I'm assuming 5 weeks of antibiotics would have taken care of any gum
infection that might have been going on (why didn't I check her teeth at
first?!), but maybe the build-up is causing significant discomfort on
it's own... I'd appreciate feedback from people who's weasels have had
tooth problems before. I can clean her teeth (which I will be doing
tonight), but would like to know what else to look out for.
--
:: Teresa ::
http://www.mivox.com/
"Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one,
take this as a sign that you have neither understood the
theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve."
-- Karl Popper
[Posted in FML issue 4569]
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