I may not be as ancient as "The Crandall", but I'm on my way. I've owned ferrets off and on since I was around ten. Let's see, okay, so I"m xx today, minus ten, and that leaves us ... okay let's round that off to about thirty years of ferret ownership. Shh. Sukie listed everything that I basically would have listed with just few slight differences: 1) Food. Change isn't the word for it. Think Meow Mix. Think the worst possible old adult cat food mix with like nil protein, etc, Think bread and milk in some parts. 2 Fancy ferrets. I never saw a color other than sable and albino. In the mid eightes I saw chocolate, chocolate points, sables, albinos, butterscotch (think golden, truly golden ferrets), and true cinnimons (like Sukie said ... true auburn/reds). I never saw a ferret with fancy markings (blazes, pandas, mutts) until the nineties. 3) Early neuter. For me, this was a huge change. I didn't see it until the mid eighties. Path Valley being the first to do it on my end of town. I didn't see it on a massive scale until the late eighties though. It was with the earlier neuter that came the younger ferrets. Before better surgical techniques were devised, large farm ferrets came in at about 8-10 weeks old. Over night we were seeing 6-8 week old babies and still with surgical sites. 4). Vaccinations. What Sukie said. Lol. It was doggy style or no style. 6). Litters. "We do it on the paper!" LOL. Like Sukie said, it was basically kitty clay or newspaper. Also bedding was different. (people used wood chips, straw, corn cob, newspapers, etc). The "ancient ones" did loose our babies back then. To "sickeness" and "oldness". You know ... "What happened to your ferret?" "Oh he got sick and died". or "He got old and died". Lol. We don't know what they were leaving with most of the time. In addition, I didn't have exposure to enough ferrets back then to say for sure that most or all ferrets lived longer back then. I just know that my own ferrets did live a lot longer than mine do today. I also know that I never saw a case of adrenal disease within my own walls or any others (private breeders included) until the late nineties. It was a shock to see my first one. I did, however, see my first case of insulinoma in the early nineties. I can't say if some cancers were more or less because the average vet did not know much about ferrets much less than necropsy one. I don't recall ever having any personal trouble with anything GI in the past either. No bouts of diareah, ulcers, etc.. This subject absolutely fascinates me. It always has. And not just about the differences in healthcare and husbandry, but the differences in ferret ownership and ferrets in general. I love this topic! I can't talk about it enough. [Posted in FML 5704]