Hi everyone, I just wanted to comment on the topic of early neutering spaying ferrets. I honestly believe that anytime you spay/neuter a ferret at such an early age as the ferret mills do you are setting up the ferret to have many health problems. The Washington Ferret Rescue and shelter has been involved for the past two years with Dr. Cathy Johnson Delaney. The study has compared ferret kits from the large Ferret Mill with kits that were born here at my house and also ferrets from another shelter that also were not spayed/or neutered to ferrets that were spayed and neutered. The results are showing without a doubt that it is causing some major problems which will effect the ferrets in the future and may cause them to develop adrenal problems and other problems in the future. I have both Ferret mill ferrets and also ferrets that came from breeders and so far only the ferrets that came from Marshalls or Triple Farm Ferrets have developed adrenal problems. The girls here that have adrenal tumors are both 5 years old and my girls that are 7 years old and came from a breeder are still completely health with no signs of any problems so far. My ferrets range in ages from 1 year old to 9 years old. I have about an even number of both Ferret mill Ferrets and ferrets that came from a breeder. My Snuggles that is nine years old and came from a breeder does have Insulinoma and has had if for 4 years now. Snuggles is on pred and Bob's Chicken Gravy. In my opinion you wouldn't spay/neuter a human as a baby why in the world would you spay/neuter an animal at such an early age. Yesterday, I just happened to get a call from one of the managers at a Petco in my area and we sure had a long talk about Petco's ferrets ending up at the shelters. I told her it was time for the Petco's to start taking on some of the responsibility of all the ferrets that are turned over to the shelters that originally came from the Petco in our areas. She made a comment that people can return ferrets back to Petco and that Petco will take the responsibility of finding new homes for them. I wonder how many Petco Customers know that! Maybe if the shelters took a dozen or so "unadoptable" Petco ferrets back to them, this would open their eyes to what the shelters are going thorough and would at least slow down on the sale of ferrets at their stores. I am hoping this manager will address this with her higher ups, she is well aware of what is going on at the shelters here in Washington. Well, its time to pack up the "Marshall Farm Kits and the my breeder Kits, jills, hobs and head to the shelter for the last blood draw in this Adrenal study. Within the next couple months all the breeder kits that are now a year old, and the intact ferrets will be spayed and neutered. No more stinky hobs! I have found that my ferrets that that are not descented do not smell much different then the ferrets that I have rescued that came from the ferret mills and were descented. The only time you can tell the difference is when the undescented ferrets get upset with each other and let off a poof, which really doesn't happen that often! My only worry is ferrets may become impacted if they are not descented. I honestly believe if you have a very good "Ferret Vet" that knows what she/he is doing it would be better to have them descented. I think this time when the kits get spayed/neutered I will have Dr. Delaney descent them. She is an expert at descenting! So I feel like this time I can trust her to do it. Charleen and the Wa Tails [Posted in FML issue 4228]