We have a really serious problem here.
 
Last night, at about 1AM, the ferret we'd been boarding for just over 24
hours starting hacking and retching.  She's a little sable girl, under two
years old to my eye, and her owner tried hard though he didn't know too
much about her.  We fixed up her cage (no more shavings, an added shelf,
all that) and mixed a very small amount of our fuzzies' food into hers so
she could get used to it in case she runs out.  And she did get a chance to
meet the others, which she seemed okay with.  In fact, yesterday afternoon
she was tearing around the house like a ferret in fast forward.  I was
expecting some runny poops from the stress of the move and all that, but
not what I saw last night...
 
Her whole body was shaking and heaving.  She was trying to go to the
bathroom, and having difficulty.  After a minute or so of this, she
vomited.  What poop did show up was actually just yellowish liquid, about
as thick as egg white, and close to the same color.  After a few minutes,
that was what was coming out of her mouth, too.  She stopped and began to
run around, seemed fine.  I sat her down and convinced her to drink a
little bit of water while I called the emergency vet.  After some
near-hysterical bits of conversation with a receptionist, I got the vet's
final message: it's just gastroenteritis, caused by stress.  Withhold food
and water for a few hours, see if it stops.
 
I refuse to withhold water from a creature that can become fatally
dehydrated in 12 hours.  Also, having dealt with my older male ferret for a
while, I've seen some of what stress can do.  It doesn't look like this.
An hour later, she started doing it again, only there was no food to
vomit--so all that came up was more yellowish stringy stuff, a little
browner than what was coming out her rear end.  Back on the phone with the
vet, who reassured me that it was okay.  I decided that she wouldn't die
before morning, and that I didn't want to take her to that vet anyway.
 
She slept for four hours or so, then got up this morning and went to the
litterbox.  No serious straining, but once again the only stuff that showed
up looked like runny egg whites, although there was more of it and it was
roughly the shape of a poop.  Then she nosed around a bit, hacked a little
but didn't vomit, and went back to sleep.  I'm not sure if it's lethargy,
since the whole crew tends to sleep through the morning.
 
We're going to a vet today, but I have to go to work and have to send her
with my boyfriend.  He's good with ferrets, but I want to be there with her
too.  Her owner really cares about her very much... all I can think is that
it sounds a little like an intestinal blockage, but none of my ferts have
ever had that problem, so I really don't know what the symptoms are.  I
still haven't found a truly good ferret vet around here (Portland, Maine),
so if any of you have any information, I would be very grateful.  For now,
she's being watched carefully, and I'm making sure she gets plenty of
fluids.  I don't really know what else to do.  Whenever my babies look
under the weather, out comes the duck soup--but a ferret who can't seem to
keep food down doesn't need to be trying new kinds of food.
 
Sorry about the length of this, but I'm really worried and I figured
details could be important.
 
On another topic:
 
All six of my ferrets are Marshall ferrets, the rescued ones and the bought
ones.  I'm not any crazier about huge breeding farms for ferrets than I am
about huge breeding farms for dogs or cats--I want to say that at the
outset.  But I live in Maine, and there are NO ferret breeders here--and
only one small shelter (ten or fewer adoptable ferrets at all times, or so
I've heard).  I know that MF babies are seven to eight weeks old when they
ship out, unless MF is lying about their birthdates, which would be kind of
ridiculous, and I also know that they're guaranteed to be free of all
contagious diseases for at least 48 hours after their arrival.  I've seen
the paperwork.
 
I'm not defending them, exactly.  They're essentially a ferret mill, which
I don't like at all.  But, at the same time, the vast majority of the
ferrets out there are from MF originally.  And my fuzzies are wonderful
critters and companions.
 
As for Path Valley Farms, does anyone here actually have any experience
with them?  I've read their ads and recently discovered that they wrote the
Barron's book about ferrets--the book just about every new ferret owner
buys.  I read it, and it reads like a PV advertisement.  What really
bothered me was that in the short section about ferret diseases at the end
of the book, there was not one single word about ECE, insulinomas, or
adrenal problems--three of the most common (identifiable) ferret illnesses.
So I'm a little bit concerned about them.
 
Any more information would be great.
 
Jen and the Crazy Business plus One Sick Ferret
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[Posted in FML issue 2682]