Another concern in NZ was that they kind of let their bovine TB checking slip when it thought to not be there and not all of the fitch (ferret fur) farmers were also not careful about providing cooked diet, and they wound up with bTB both in at least one farm and also in some wild either fitch or polecat populations as well as in ungulates. (If that reminds anyone else of all the ADV problem where it was assumed to not be there but it was and ADV+ ferrets got sent from there to at least 2 other continents, well, yeah, it really reminds me of that, too.) I know that NZ is said to be beautiful, so beautiful that my own Father -- who had been trying to get us to visit Hawaii once wrote to us, "Forget Hawaii." when he saw NZ, but, gosh, does it ever seem to have some of the animal health and behavior things messed up... Heck, it even ignores its own work on native bird and egg destruction by introduced rats way too often, possibly because they are so much harder to control and so much more prevalent, as happens with rats almost any place they set up shop. -- Sukie (not a vet) Ferret Health List co-moderator http://www.smartgroups.com/groups/ferrethealth FHL Archives fan http://ferrethealth.org/archive/ replacing http://fhl.sonic-weasel.org International Ferret Congress advisor http://www.ferretcongress.org [Posted in FML issue 5142]