Hi, I am sad to say that my ferret, Uwe, one of the hopeless mustelids has passed away. I wokw up this morning and was disturbed by the fact that he was not up and scratching to get out of his cage like he usuall is. I opened the cage and found him stiff, alas!!! :-( I was shocked and coulden't really understand why something like this had happened. I had always watched him when he was out of the cage and I never let him get into anything that might harm him. I could not find the cause of his death, so I took his body to the vet. I was suprised that the autopsy only took 4 hours. The vet. said that he had died from sudden pnemonia, and didn't have a chance due a severly weaked immune system. I thought this was strange, because pnemonia is usually noticible in advance. My Uwe is the only ferret of minr from Marshall Farms, and i'm wondering if that is why he died at only a year and a half. The vet. said he has had cases like this before, where a ferret dies suddenly from something a weakened immune system could not fight off. I have never heard of this, and I am very disturbed by its occurence after I heard so much about how Marshall Farms was controversial, but still ok. In my opinion, the overall opinion of Marshall farms is to good to be true. Is it possibble that I just got a bad ferret from them. I would think that would happen when a farm produces over 50, 000= ferret in a single year. If anyone can help me with this dillema reagrding Uwe's cause of death and anything you may know about these occurences and other stuff on Marshall Farms, please e-mail me. I am offf to the rainbow bridge to leave poor Uwe to his new life, Sadly and no dooks, Max Holmquist and the hopeless mustelids (missing Uwe) :-((( [Posted in FML issue 1747]