>One of my ferrets, Teddy, was just diagnosed with a fibroma in his left >shoulder. It has engulfed his whole nerve in the leg and to remove it >would mean amputation. The biopsy came back negative, thank God. Dear Eleanor, First let me say I'm sorry you are going through this problem with your ferret. Ferrets can get around on three legs just fine... dogs and cats can do it, and ferret has a much lower center of gravity :-). So if you decide to have the leg amputated, you should not worry too much about that. Second, STOP blaming yourself. This whole myth that if we just somehow find the *perfect* diet and feed it to our ferrets, it will prevent them from ever getting sick has done a huge disservice to ferret owners. Sure, diet is important. But the test of any theory is whether you can disprove it with a single instance that does not fit the theory. You have a 3.5 year old privately bred ferret, raised on a high protein/fat diet, altered late. All these things (according to the group mind of the FML) will mean that your ferret will never get a disease, and will only die of old age. As you are painfully now aware, it may not happen that way. I had a privately bred ferret who also got adrenal at 3 years of age, but he was asymptomatic, so I never knew until he couldn't pee one day (the breeder still can't believe it was adrenal, but the pathology said it was. The breeder can't believe this because late altered privately bred ferrets aren't supposed to get adrenal - so says the theory). I've also had a farm bred (Path Valley) ferret, who lived on various kibbles his whole life, as well as whatever else I would give him. He ate anything - tortilla chips, Cocoa Puffs, muffins, popcorn, fruit, anything off my plate - you get the idea. He also lived to be over 8 years old before dying of old age. I don't think it matters whether they are privately bred or not, or whether we feed them exclusively mice, or chicken gravy, or good quality kibble. At least, I don't think it matters to the ferret population as a whole. There are probably instances where a genetic predisposition in an individual could be affected by a certain diet. But I don't believe that diet alone causes the problems we see in ferrets. We want the cause to be simple, because then we feel like we have control over it, and can prevent a problem from happening by simply doing one thing. This is natural and understandable. But we can't always prevent the bad stuff from happening. This is NOT your fault. Good luck with Teddy, Karen [Posted in FML issue 4264]