I have never encountered ANY studies indicating that neutering or early neutering have ANY effect on heart disease in ferrets, but there is intriguing new work on cardiomyopathy in multiple species indicating a genetic component. I don't have time to search on that for you but suggested places and links are in my sig lines. Don't forget the PubMed website: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez and try the search term cardiomyopathy genetics Now, diet CAN play a role in the development of cardiomyopathy. Insufficient taurine plays a large role for cats, appears to possibly play a role for ferrets, and plays a role with some large breeds of dogs (so those with some large breed dogs may want to make sure their dogs get some more taurine than other dogs get in their food): http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/full/136/10/2525 http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/reprint/136/10/2525 Sukie (not a vet) Recommended ferret health links: http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/ http://ferrethealth.org/archive/ http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html http://www.miamiferret.org/fhc/ http://www.ferretcongress.org/ http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html [Posted in FML 6169]
