>From:    Anonymous Poster <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: My MF baby
>The manager guess them to be at best, 4 weeks old, which my vet later
>confirmed.
 
I'll bet your pet store manager and your vet were wrong.  A four week old
ferret is developmentally way behind a four week old puppy or kitten.  This
year we've had kittens, puppies and kits.  The ferrets are very slow to
devlop for the first 5 weeks.  At an age when puppies are bright eyed and
chasing each other around the pen the ferrets have closed eyes and ears and
are stumbling around barely able to move much less run.
 
Were the eyes open?  If so then you kit was most likely at least five and
very probably the six to seven weeks old that Marshall claims.  Too young?
Probably.  With the slow development of ferret kits, that six or seven
weeks is too young.  The fact that you identified the color as chocolate
means the kit was probably older than four weeks.  Its pretty hard to know
what color kits that young will actually be.  The dark ones are barely
differentiating - if you didn't know the color of the parents you likely
wouldn't know the color the kit would be.
 
Really, they are not the same as kittens and puppies.  Unless your vet
specifically consulted a book such as the Fox book and checked the teeth
and the eyes and other details, he probably assumed that ferrets were
about the same as kittens or puppies.  He wouldn't know that they are that
different at that age.
 
This will make some of you happy, but not others I guess...
 
But for the next week you might not hear from us.  We're going on a weeks
vacation in Florida.  Our first vacation this long in many years.  We have
someone taking care of the animals.  We'll try to get net access in Key
West but might not manage it.
 
Enjoy your vacation from having me butting in all the time...
 
-bill
--
bill and diane killian
zen and the art of ferrets
http://www.zenferret.com/
mailto:[log in to unmask]
[Posted in FML issue 2716]