At 5:42 AM -0500 11/29/01, Automatic digest processor wrote: >When they called Marshalls about this, I had to laugh, because Marshalls >said that they should be kept on blankets with hammies. How about that >Marshalls to the rescue! Ha. Well anyway I wanted to share with you the >trouble I had getting my store to change, but do have the store call >Marshalls and ask for a recomendation. That might help. It sounds like they aren't Marshall's, though, and the store owners won't say where they are from. She can use the NJ specific tips in my other letter, though, if there are actual health problems present, and even if there are not she can still make a complaint and request a surprise inspection. Meanwhile, in your talks with your home office and DM or RM here are some sites that may be useful for you (as well as for others). Have seen many needs for them again; must be a number of new folks on the FML. Oh, and this one has at least one change since the last version. http://www.trifl.org/cedar.html http://listserv.cuny.edu/archives/ferret-search.html http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Ferret-Health-list http://www.miamiferret.org/fhc http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html http://www.ferret.net/medical/ http://www.trifl.org/medical.html http://home.att.net/~hhoefer/ http://www.lbah.com/Ferrets/insulinoma.htm http://www.ferretcentral.org http://www.geocities.com/wolfysluv/adv-straight.html http://www.napcc.aspca.org/ http://advancedhelp.org http://www.ferret.org/index.htm http://www.avecon.com/AveconADV.htm http://www.hiproanimalhealth.com/catalog/usa/index.htm http://www.graylab.ac.uk/omd/ http://www.peteducation.com/drugs_supplements.htm http://www.marvistavet.com/html/pharmacy_center.html http://www.bradleyhills.com/ http://www.ferretdoctor.com http://www.petinsurance.com/ http://www.doggon.com http://www.vetheart.com/ James Fox's _Biology and Diseases of the Ferret_ (both editions) implies that there is thiaminase in raw eggs and this can cause a thiamine deficiency in a section written by Doctors Fox and McLain. I don't know if the wording is just nebulous so that the route is entirely without thiaminase, or if they made the same error in content twice in 9 years (though i seriously doubt that), or if Bob goofed and there may even be two contributors to thiamine deficiency in raw eggs. Okay, any question worth having is worth studying so I pulled out _The Cambridge History of Food_, a serious, 2,000+ page two-volume resource for nutritional anthropologists and food historians. These texts do not mention thiaminase, so perhaps the Fox book could use some more clear wording on that that portion in the future unless they know something Bob or I don't (which is always possible). The Cambridge texts do mention that eggs are terrible sources for calcium. For raw eggs the chicken egg section mentions that avidin removes biotin from being an available nutrient (not good), and that ovotransferrin in raw eggs chelates ions of iron, making it unavailable nutritionally (also not good). Furthermore, while the salmonella risk *might* be lower for ferrets than for humans salmonella can pose a risk for animal which is compromised without its people knowing, and raw or under-cooked eggs are regularly linked to salmonella cases. That help? [Posted in FML issue 3617]