I came across this post below in one of the FHL (ferret health list)
posts of 2007. Mostly I take care of rescued/elderly ferrets who
are used to kibble, and I became interested in the kibble/raw diet
discussion mentioned in the FML 2010 - #323 -ferret diet in the meeting
with BobC who has been doing so much hard work on ferrets in New
Zealand and world wide. I happened to search the FML and FHL archives
on diet discussions for more information, and found in the following
email a very interesting account of one of the Portland International
Ferret Congress symposium sessions at which BobC spoke (and wished I
had been able to attend).
This post about the conference mentions the various ailments discussed
by vets, eg cardiomyopathy (which my ferret Babs has and is doing well
on lasix and enalapril), and the lack of a connection to dental disease
(which Babs has - she's lost all her canines and gets her remaining
teeth cleaned every few days), and that dental disease is not caused or
cured by feeding kibble. BFF diet is mentioned as well. So I copied the
post and thought the readers of the FML would be interested in what
Danee wrote after attending (thanks for the post Danee - those vet
discussions must have been fascinating.).
From 2007 -
" Back From the Symposium in Portland
Posted by: "Danee" [log in to unmask] ferrets4all
Date: Tue Jun 26, 2007 7:47 pm ((PDT))"
Hi All,
I am back from Portland. One of the wonderful things about attending
these events is getting to hear all the new ideas the vets and others
have concerning ferret ailments and care.
Bob Church gave 2 talks this year, and I think he may have shocked the
audience with some of what he said.
Bob spoke on ferret husbandry, which included feeding. He stated that
after doing his research, he has not been able to find any evidence
that eating kibble causes dental disease in ferrets the way it does in
cats and dogs. He added that he really tried to find it, too, because
he had spoken about his theories that it did in so many places.
He is not sure why it doesn't - but it may be due to the shape and
small size of the teeth. However, he wanted to get the word out -
kibble does not cause dental disease in ferrets.
That said, his research also showed that kibble does not prevent dental
disease, the way some people thought it might.
What kibble doesn't do is clean the teeth. But, if we as owners take
the time to clean our ferrets teeth, then dental disease will not be a
problem. Kibble will also cause an unnatural wear problem in the back
teeth, but this is only a problem if you want to switch older ferrets
to a natural diet. By the time a ferret is 3 or 4 years old, their back
molars, which are necessary for proper tearing of animal tissue and
cracking of bones, may be too worn to allow them to properly eat whole
prey.
BTW - he said that feeding raw meaty bones may also not clean the
teeth. What he now thinks contributes to teeth cleaning is eating
feathers fur and skin. So, unless feathers and fur are involved in the
diet, he thinks you will need to brush your ferrets teeth if you want
to avoid dental disease. He was wondering if a chew toy that was
covered in fur could be made to naturally clean the teeth.
He has seen some instances of dental disease in wild animals, but the
percentage is very small as compared to domestic ferrets kept in the
US.
I did ask Travis (of Prairie Wildlife Foundation) why the BFFs are fed
a raw ground meat - as was shown in a video on the web that many people
have seen. He said that basically they do not have the money or other
resources to keep prairie dog colonies at the facilities. Prairie dogs
can be difficult to trap, and it can only be done during part of the
year. Once the wild dogs are trapped, they must be quarantined for 21
days to make sure they are not carrying any diseases like plague.
Prairie dogs also take up a lot of space. A colony big enough to feed
even a few BFFs will take up not acres, but thousands of acres. So, the
dogs that are captured will not reproduce to provide more little dogs.
As a result, prairie dogs are only fed to the ferrets that will be
reintroduced into the wild.
Ferrets that will be remaining at the breeding facilities are fed a
variety of things, and do get some frozen prey animals. But, they do
also get the ground meat that was seen being fed in the video clip I
mentioned before. The ground meat is convenient, because it is compact
and takes up less storage space. It is also easy to obtain. If Prairie
Wildlife Foundation had unlimited resources, they probably would feed
only prairie dogs to the black footed ferrets, but since they have only
limited resources, they feed what they can.
There was also some discussion about whether dental disease is likely
to be a big cause of the problems we see in ferrets - during the talks
and Vet Q&A Panel, and also off-line with vets who were there. The
answer from the panel was probably not.
Dr. Susan Brown said that while it is thought that dental disease can
be related to certain types of heart disease, it is definitely not
thought to be related to cardiomyopathy, which is the main form of
heart disease that we see in ferrets.
Dr. Williams, who has looked at thousands of ferret tissue samples
said that dental disease could play a role in a small portion of organ
failures that he has seen - but that he would be talking under 5%. Most
of the samples he has received where the cause of death was liver,
kidney or other organ failure were clearly attributable to other
causes. There are some that he would classify as either unknown or
uncertain causes, and some of those could be due to dental disease.
Of course, usually when he receives tissue samples, he receives just
the organs and not the whole body. Also, he is often not told if they
came from a ferret with dental disease. If he had the whole body, or
was told the ferret had dental disease, then he might look at the
samples differently. At this time, while he admits that ferrets in the
US do get dental disease, he does not think it is a primary cause of
illness and/or organ failure.
[Posted in FML 6886]
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