Yes, ferrets can drink Ensure. But there is no purpose or special benefit to ferrets to drink Ensure. No, it does not contain milk. Instead of milk, it contains a soy protein, which is not a digestible protein for ferrets. (This also applies to similar products designed for dogs & cats like Stat or Dyne... the vitamin balance is better, but there's STILL NO PROTEIN that can be digested by ferrets!) This is a long-standing, long-misunderstood debate. It started when vets began to prescribe Ensure as a high calorie, vitamin dense sick food for dogs and cats. Ferrets came along into the vet's practice, and since vets were taught in vet school to treat ferrets as small cats or dogs, the vets also prescribed Ensure as a sick food supplement for ferrets... BUT... Cats & dogs can digest the soy protein since their metabolic cycle is 6 to 8 hours. A ferret's metabolic cycle is 3 to 4 hours, much too short for the complex vegetable proteins to be broken down and absorbed before being pooped out. Many vets and long time ferret owners STILL insist on using Ensure in ferret sick soups because it's the way they've always done it and it doesn't appear to have killed a ferret yet. (And a lot of web sites don't get updated regularly! So it's ALWAYS best to ask about something you read on a web site before taking it as "gospel".) The simple truth is... there are much better, vitamin dense (plus being vitamin balanced for ferrets rather than humans), ANIMAL protein and ANIMAL fat dense supplements available for use in ferret sick soups. Truthfully, a MILK content would be BETTER nutritionally since it's proteins & fats are animal-based... BUT it can take up to three months for the ferret's system to adjust to tolerate the milk without diarrhea. So, you WOULD NOT want to give an already sick ferret something that would further disrupt the digestive tract. So the bottom line is, Ensure won't kill them, but it's simply NOT the best available choice for nutrition. I always like to present alternatives when I disagree with something so I'll add the following footnote: My preference for critically ill ferrets is chicken baby food (usually Gerber's Stage 2, but Heinz & Beechnut also make one that's just as good). The baby food is more easily digestible than a soup made from kibble which can be an important factor in illness affecting the digestive tract such as ulcers or IBD or ECE. For long term feeding (over 1 month), liquid or tube dispensed vitamins (depending on the illness) can be added. Sick ferrets will literally starve themselves to death JUST because their stomach is upset and they'll fight tooth and toenail to prevent you from getting food into them. So with a sick ferret, every bite of food counts. Every bite needs to have as much nutrition concentrated into it as is possible. One of the most common complications of "failure to thrive" is starvation or near-starvation. Debi Christy Ferrets First Foster Home Practical & easy training, care, & maintenance articles available at http://www.geocities.com/ferretsfirst/ Recommended as a "Must See" web site by Ferrets Magazine! [Posted in FML issue 3796]