Out here in Ca the fert battles have been going strong, and here are some
contacts given to me.
Bill Phillips, Attny... he has been involved with both Ca fert cases and
out of state battles (707)431-2277
And two other people that should have court battle related info:
Diane Darling (707)463-2707
and the N. Cal. Domestic Ferret Assocation - Jim Clayton (707)642-3870
These numbers were given to me by a customer of mine who used to own
ferrets who is keeping very on top of the issues out here. Hope they help.
Since I don't know if this'll go right, here's also a little thing from
me for the whole list:
-------------------
One of my ferrets had a strange symptom of losing all the fur on his body
from the 'waist' on down. It was missing for over a year. The vet here did
xrays and blood tests and noticed a slightly enlarged spleen but that was
it. We switched my crew (4 of them) over to cat science diet and his coat
grew back in, except that his tail still isn't bushy like the others...
Anyone seen symptoms like that anywhere?
[In a Vet journal extract we have, it suggests a number of things for
alopecia (sp?): nutrition, in-heat, pregnancy, distemper, and a few other
things that I'd never heard of and expect are rare (Aleutian disease -
anybody know what that is?). One of our ferrets (Nicia) was missing
quite a bit of fur, and her tail was completely naked when we got her.
After some major medical intervention, it all grew back, tho the
tail and belly are still thinner than our other ferret's after a couple
of years. Our vet believes that the missing fur was due to a combination
of malnourishment and the physical injury that was responsible for her
medical problems (she was found loose by the Humane Society before we
got her). She's also considerably undersized - also probably a result
of the malnourishment.
Couldn't be distemper... Unlikely to be heat. How warm is their
housing? What were you feeding them before?
Re: "slightly enlarged spleen". H'mm. Both our vet and the vet article
have said that ferrets have larger spleens than you'd expect, leading to vets
without much contact with ferrets thinking that the spleen was "enlarged".
On the other hand, it *might* be symptomatic of Lymphosarcoma - which
is what our male died of. Suggest that you enquire whether your vet
checked for that... Though, the "state-of-the-art" seems to suggest
that there is no 100% reliable way to diagnose it short of surgery
encountering unmistakeable tumors. (There's some suggestion that
Lymphosarcoma is related in some way to Feline Leukemia Virus, or
a ferret version thereof, and that the FeLv test *might* work in
such cases (Toby's blood tested positive after he died), but there's no
solid evidence either way with ferrets and many vets have differing
opinions.)]
Has anyone tried the ferret shampoo offered by Ferret World? Good, bad,
what? Does it make straw-colored albinos more white? I'd heard there was
a special vitamin to give albinos that helped them stay white, but that
was years before I'd ever had an albino... does anyone know of this?
[We've always used a cat flea-and-tick shampoo, but have finally woken
up to the fact that this is kind of stupid - we've *never* had reason
to believe that they've been exposed. We're switching over to
Johnson's baby shampoo immediately. Regarding albino shampoo, please
see end of this issue - I've reprinted a fragment of issue 9 on this.]
My first ferret died in his sleep at the age of 7 today. He was a runty
scrawny thing, and he'd near died on me several times in the last two years
due to going without food/water for most of a day or overexertion. He never
bit (to answer the fert and children question) loved all people, cats, dogs
and anything else that could play with him, and got mellower as he got
older. The other three have exhibited the same tendencies... They are
currently 5, 3, and 2+ years old or something like that...
Happy ferting! *Tigger*
[Posted in FML 0047]
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