William wrote:

>I was surprised tonight when Izzie jump up on my lap and started
>eating greens from my salad. There was no dressing and he showed
>a preference to leaf lettuce. Not the leafy ends but the crunchy
>stocks.

We used to have one (around 30 years and 20 years ago for when she was
with us), an extremely long lived one, actually, who also loved lettuce
ribs as an occasional treat. Some greens, including some forms of
lettuce, are rather high in Vitamin K so you would not want a ferret
who was throwing clots to have it since Vitamin K promotes clotting.
You can check nutrient listings using Google on that score. Watch ones
who are prone to intestinal upset since plant matter, dairy foods, and
allergens (sometimes a type of flesh food, sometimes the proteins of
a type of starch, but with allergies varying among individuals) since
fibrous foods sometimes can worsen such difficulties.

There is a short and very interesting article in the latest issue of
Sci Am on the incorporation of food microRNA and how that can affect
which genes are turned on or off (but does not say how many of these
directly affect the genes and which may affect epigenetic switches,
though the work is very, very new so there is huge amount to learn).
If you do not get it then go to your magazine store/book store or to
your library. See page 22, article: "Vitamins, Minerals and MicroRNA"
in the December 2011 Scientific American. The work referred was from
a study Nanjing University lead by Zhang Chen-Yu which I suspect may be
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22064702

>Cell Res. 2011 Nov 8. doi: 10.1038/cr.2011.174. [Epub ahead of print]
>
>Exogenous plant MIR168a specifically targets mammalian LDLRAP1:
>evidence of cross-kingdom regulation by microRNA.
>
>Zhang L, Hou D, Chen X, Li D, Zhu L, Zhang Y, Li J, Bian Z, Liang X,
>Cai X, Yin Y, Wang C, Zhang T, Zhu D, Zhang D, Xu J, Chen Q, Ba Y,
>Liu J, Wang Q, Chen J, Wang J, Wang M, Zhang Q,Zhang J, Zen K,
>Zhang CY.
>
>Source
>Jiangsu Engineering Research Center for microRNA Biology and
>Biotechnology, State Key Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology,
>School of Life Sciences, Nanjing University, 22 Hankou Road, Nanjing
>210093, China;
>PMID: 22064702 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

See also:
http://www.nature.com/cr/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/cr2011174a.html

That is interesting when one considers the wild polecat diet since they
not only eat the flesh and organs of their common prey animals such as:
- frogs (more commonly eaten in settings high in frogs where they are
  sometimes the predominant prey type seasonally, per T. Lode),
- European rabbits (in a Vincent Wildlife Trust study of road killed
  polecats in Britain they were 85% of the diet),
- adult voles, adult mice,
- rats (a more common prey among Steepe Polecats), etc.,
- but also often eat the contents of the stomach and intestines, and 
  certainly at times eat a bit of other things like berries in season

(per T. Lode article read in the past, though stoats may eat berries
more), so the wild diet might have different impact on the functions
of microRNA from the diet of the prey animals that simply is not being
matched by any of the diets people are feeding at home. ***What may
look on the surface as if it approximates a wild diet might not
actually do so in important ways.***

Some fun resources for you to open and at least read the abstracts:

http://medwelljournals.com/abstract/?doi=javaa.2012.1.8

http://psjc.icm.edu.pl/psjc/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?9704091544280099

<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1439-0310.1995.tb00334.x/abstract>

http://wbrc.org.uk/worcrecd/Issue7/polecat.htm

<http://md1.csa.com/partners/viewrecord.php?requester=gs&collection=ENV&recid=5627157>
has the interesting approach of looking at how much the diet differs
between female and male among polecats and there is an interesting
twist in there, too, from the abstract:
>Despite strong sexual dimorphism (reaching the ratio 1.81), a study
>of diet and prey selection in polecats (Mustela putorius) revealed
>only minor differences in their feeding habits. There was a greater
>frequency of large-sized prey (mainly lagomorphs) in the summer diet
>of females than in that of males. The frequency of anurans (Rana
>dalmatina and Bufo bufo) in the diet did not differ significantly
>between the two sexes. Male prey predominated in the diet of both
>sexes. Although prey availability, as indicated by the trapping
>of small rodents and anurans, showed a predominance of males in
>populations, Ivlev's index for selectivity demonstrated selective
>predation on male prey exceeding availability both by male and
>female polecats.

http://ecologieevolutive.fr.gd/Publications-scientifiques.htm
(Refresh your page if the video tries to come up and causes you
problems like hanging up your browser. That works, and the site
has many links.)

This may interest:
<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1439-0310.1973.tb02095.x/abstract>

While this article may not be of interest, the mention that bones can
last all the way through the digestive tract might be of interest to
those who have had ferrets have perforations:
<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-7998.1999.tb00981.x/abstract>

<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-7998.1994.tb06057.x/abstract>

This one was different in two regard from some other studies, showing
that polecats exploit what is handy and still keep the diet pretty
varied:
Diet of the polecat Mustela putorius L. in riverine habitats (Northern
Italy) [PDF] from italian-journal-of-mammalogy.it 
C Prigioni... - Hystrix, 1995 - italian-journal-of-mammalogy.it
includes:
>ABSTRACT - Food habits of the polecat (Mustela putorius) were studied
>by the analysis of 50 scats collected in riverine habitats of northern
>Italy from 1985 to 1988. Data were expressed as percent frequency of
>occurrcncc (F%) and relative pcrcentage of frequency (Fr%). Rodents
>(Fr% = 48.4), mainly Apodemus sp. (Fr% = 25.0) and Clethrionomys
>glareolus (Fr% = 15.6), lagomorphs (Fr% = 23.4) and birds (Fr% = 12.5)
>wcrc the main components of the diet. Falconiformes, probably consumed
>as carrion, and Ralliformes wcrc recorded for the first time in the
>polecat diet in Europe. Fruit, amphibians and reptiles wcrc scarcely
>exploited by the polecat.

<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-7998.1994.tb06057.x/abstract>
Abstract:
>Variation in habitat use was studied by radiotracking 11 polecats
>Mustela putorius in two wetlands in western France. Habitat selection
>showed a clear seasonality. Marshes were the most exploited habitat in
>spring while woods were mainly used in the coldest months and meadows
>were frequented in summer and winter. An analysis of scats showed that
>diet correlated with habitat utilization. The proportions of bank
>volesClethrionomys glareolus, and meadow voles Microtus sp. were,
>respectively, related to the use of woods and meadows, while
>amphibians (mainly Rana dalmatina and Bufo bufo) were associated with
>marshes. Availabilities of rodents, assessed monthly by trapline
>success, were also significantly correlated to their occurrences. In
>contrast, no correlations were found between larger prey, such as
>brown rats Rattus norvegicus and rabbits Oryctolagus cuniculus, and
>any habitats or their abundance in the field. The occurrences of
>these prey and of some minor resources, such as shrews and birds,
>were correlated most with meteorological factors. The exploitation
>of marshes and amphibians increased when small rodents declined.
>Therefore, in the polecat, habitat selection was mostly influenced by
>trophic factors. Dietary diversity was greater in spring when food
>resources decreased, suggesting that polecats were optimal foragers.
>The study has emphasized that the polecat is a generalist feeder.

<http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2907.1987.tb00282.x/abstract>

Notice that Sables (the relative, not polecats with sable markings)
exploit plant foods more though their digestive tract is very similar
with no caecum, short intestinal tract (only 2 . 9 times longer than
body length (and I purposely added spacing in there since the leg of
the 2 tends to hide the decimal point):
http://www.springerlink.com/content/pt08rjrmt4eld7gc/

and there are plenty more

The rodents, and the rabbits will carry partly digested grains/grass
seed and other vegetable matter to be eaten along with the digestive
tract. The rodents and the frogs will carry partly digested insects
there. The frogs will carry perhaps some algae and certainly also fish.
For birds think fruits, grains/grass seeds, insects, etc. in their
digestive tracts. So, each of those diets may play a part for polecats
which eat the digestive tracts.

Birds, it appears, in parts of the polecat range are more often preyed
upon by mink, ditto fish, and make up a minor portion of the wild diet,
except in that Italian study, and it would be interesting to know of
the high portion of rabbits occurred partly due to seasonal effects on
numbers of road kill specimens in the Vincent Wildlife Trust article
but I don't have time to check that.

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/
http://www.ferrethealth.msu.edu/
http://www.ferretcongress.org/
http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml
http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html
all ferret topics:
http://listserv.ferretmailinglist.org/archives/ferret-search.html

"All hail the procrastinators for they shall rule the world tomorrow."
(2010, Steve Crandall)

[Posted in FML 7250]