I used to work at a pet store, not even a year ago.  And despite all kinds
of people believing the MF kits were too young to be shipped--and by all
kinds of people, I mean the management of the store--I never saw a ferret
that I think was less than six weeks old.
 
I think six weeks is too young, but that's supposed to be their age--
between six and eight weeks.
 
I'm not saying they never ship out kits that are too young--but please keep
in mind that some ferrets develop faster than others and that speed of
growth, as well as size and physical development, depends largely on
nutrition.  So sometimes a litter of kits would come in, a few of whom were
pretty obviously true siblings, and one would be tiny and less sturdy.
In a large litter with heavy food competition and not enough human
intervention, two kits could be the same age and look several weeks apart.
We had a litter of kittens here, and the littlest one--the "runt"--was a
full week later opening his eyes and two weeks later having independent
bowel movements than his brother.  And he had no health problems at all,
other than poor positioning in the uterus.  He was given supplemental
feedings starting when he was four weeks old, and he still looked two weeks
younger than the other three.
 
It's horrible when the kits really are too young.  But please don't assume
that every smallish, weak kit is young.  Sick, malnourished--sure.  Age is
not necessarily a factor.  Surely you've heard of the phenomenon when
applied to human infants: failure to thrive.
 
We have two 4-month-old ferrets here right now that are almost certainly
litter-siblings.  One of them weighs nearly 3 pounds.  The other one weighs
1 and if she curls up she could fit into his head.  (She wins the fights,
too.)
 
Anyway, my piece said--sorry about the length--I wanted to share that it's
been a great week here at the rescue.  I found homes for a slew of ferrets,
including a pair of abused girls that have been known to bite pretty hard.
I never thought they'd leave here and I can't say I was thrilled about
the thought of keeping them indefinitely (ouch!), although they've made
progress in their time here.  I danced around the house so much after that
encounter that the ferrets were looking at me like I was crazy.  Also, one
of my adopters is a professional photographer.  She mostly takes pictures
of horses, but is trying to get into ferret photography.  Her own never
hold still, so she came over and borrowed ours.  Some of the results of the
shoot are on our new Photo Gallery page, and they're beautiful.  Please
come check them out.
 
One of our ferrets was coughing a lot; he just got a clean health check,
just a cold.  The one who had had hte partial blockage is putting on weight
and eating like she's never seen food.  The only thing we're still dealing
with with her is that she has a broken canine tooth that's abcessed and
needs to be removed before it can cause too much damage to her liver and
kidneys.  We're currently looking for someone to sponser her surgery, since
it'll be between $200 and $300 and it's not an emergency.  (When it's an
emergency, we put ourselves into debt and the shelter into debt to us.)
There will soon be a picture and her story on the site as well, along with
information on how anyone who wants to help Taz get her tooth yanked can
do so. :-)
 
This just feels like a run of good luck for us.  We had been having a hard
time--lost one of our personal ferrets to lymphoma, dealing with illness in
them and us.  It's like April has brought a turn for the better.
 
Sorry for the wordiness, but thanks for listening.
 
Jen and the Crazy Business
http://home.maine.rr.com/tesseract
[Posted in FML issue 3024]