>I live in France, and have a ferret...what has been said is true-
>European ferrets do not really suffer from the same things that
>American ferrets do. For example, ADV doesn't exist here.
Well, I haven't personally yet heard of ECE there that has been proven as
actually being ECE, but ADV sure is in Europe, and has been for some time
now. I am glad to hear that it is not as issue in your own area. It
appears to have been brought to Europe along with some American mink used
by fur farms. If you read in Pubmed you'll even find a study about an
area in Spain where there is serious concern that the presence of the
disease may cause survival problems for some other mustelid species.
There were British and Swedish websites by vets on ADV before I can
recall any U.S. ones; think it was a few years that i was referring
people to those before ones in the States arose.
There are some areas in Europe where the time frame for noting its
presence in family ferrets, or it's rate in family ferret, or both are
worse than in part of the U.S.
For those who don't know: ADV is Aleutian Disease Virus, which was first
noticed in farmed mink populations of American Mink in the NW. It got
into the household ferret population due to some places having both mink
and ferrets. At that time MF did not have mink, but evne then there were
alternative sources of ferrets and many of these were fur farms which
quickly jumped onto the bandwagon selling ferrets also as pets as long
ago as 20 years ago in the U.S. We had some fur stock ones ourselves
back then and I can tell you that an employee of one of the common mall
pet store chains told me that they themselves acquired fur fitch to breed
and sell for this use. Some of the fur fitch also had behavioral and
health issues because they were bred from stock raised for fur but not
for behavior, health, or longevity so they looked very, very, very, very
pretty but too many had all sorts of serious problems, going decently
beyond the percentage with ADV. Add onto that the reality that the early
handling of many was by people who didn't care about behavior and it was
a mess... Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the non-standard markings
(polecat markings or albinos) were then seen inn greater numbers from the
fur fitch stock, and that some health problems appear to have increased
as the percentage of genes from fancies has increased in the U.S. stock.
MUCH of that is still hyopthetical, though.
Well, earlier I referred the study done in the Netherlands which found
how common adrenal neoplasia was there. They also noted that there might
be a correlation (Note *MIGHT* since the math was not definitive and the
sampling was done in a way that made the qualifications essential and
responsible on their parts.) between age of neutering and on-set of
adrenal neoplasia, BUT the statistical margin of error (the +/- aspect,
the slush factor) was so huge that 7 months would be in the noise if
similar numbers hold once actual studies exist. Of course, such studies
do NOT yet exist, so I hope someone reputable is working on this or will
work on this. It looks like it might be possible that whole ferret may
have lower rates of adrenal neoplasia or may have later on-set but the
percentages do NOT exist to know if this is a bit of reality or merely an
impression that may later prove invalid.
>You'd be surprised to find out that there is an almost non existant rate
>of adrenal disease- they just dont get it here.
That assumption existed in the Netherlands, too, with those whose ferrets
got it thinking that they had unusual ferrets until it was actually
studied, and -- surprise -- there it was and it was not unusual!
Now, if the viral trigger hypothesis holds up (in combination with other
factors or not) then the migration of a disease could explain such
differences over an area, but so may a lot of other possible factors,
from genetics, to housing conditions, to what vets look for, to how many
get vet care, to...
>The lighting conditions must be the same, if not worse than in the US,
>especially in the big ciites (i live in paris) where light is not
>plentiful.
The light hypothesis is actually the opposite-- that ferrets here may get
too much light and way too little true darkness, and U.S. cities and
towns tend to have so much light that real star watching is impossible
even from decent distances, so pretty well the opposite.
Like everyone else in the diet/genetics/disease-trigger discussions I
have been mentioning a lot of hypotheses so we just all need to remember
to separate hypotheses from known facts in our assessments, and not get
upset about things that are not yet known.
[Posted in FML issue 3941]
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