Heather, I'm not a vet but I've had a similar experience. Elliott started scratching terribly. He was biting himself and I could hear him scratching all the time. His coat became dry and brittle. He did not have fleas or mites - we did skin scrapes. He put him on anti- biotics just in case it might be in an infection. No change. We tried prednisone....no change. Then my vet thought it might be a food allergy. I was feeding Iam's Kitten Proplan Kitten combo along with ferret chow. He told me to cut out the chicken and feed him Proplan Turkey/Barley. He said if it was food it would take about 3 weeks to notice a change. Well, in 3 weeks, Elliott was a different ferret. He gained weight, stopped scratching, his coat became soft and beautiful again, and now he is a happy ferret. He eats Proplan Turkey/Barley and Iam's Lamb/Rice combo and I haven't had any problems since then. If your vet has done skin scrapes that are negative or if he has tried the above and nothing is working, it's worth a shot to try to eliminate the chicken and see if that's the problem. MOST cat foods - and ferret foods have corn in them anyway. Some more than others, but if you read the Marshall Food bag, you'll see that it also has corn in it. BTW, I occasionally try giving him other foods such as Totally Ferret, but he started scratching all over again. We're waiting for TF to come in different flavors - turkey or lamb - but until then he's doing fine on turkey and lamb. Debbie Riccio WNYFLFA Rochester, NY [Posted in FML issue 1206]