>Subject: zen's prattle >in the fourth week. I'd be worried about a kit whose eyes opened during >the third week - it would mean something was wrong. (I can't help myself.) DUH! We're not talking about a healthy ferret zen, we're talking about a ferret who's now dead. >Its exceedingly hard to nurse day old kits on bottles. We have never found >nipples small enough. If thats what you did, congratulations. Almost all >the breeders with decades of experience claim its more or less impossible. As someone who's successfully nursed a litter of baby MICE ..... I find that baby ferrets aren't all that difficult to feed and it's certainly not impossible. >Perhaps the kits you took in weren't actually just a day old or I >misunderstood what you meant. The baby ferrets were actually just a day old and you understood perfectly what I meant. >They would be smaller than your pinkie finger at that age. Day old mice are about the size of the nail on your pinkie finger. >They need to nurse with in hours of birth and be kept completely warm >or they turn purple-blue and die very very quickly. That's called hypothermia and occurs with ALL species. (Although rabbits don't nurse for the first time until 24 to 48 hours.) >A nipple for them to use would be something like the size of the end of a >syringle with the sharp removed. And of course a 1 cc syringe (syringle?) is an excellent choice if you can't shave enough rubber off of the nipple. >Look at any jill (spayed or not) and you can see just how small the nipples >are. And I challenge YOU to take a look at the nipples on a MOUSE. >Most breeders with decades of experience seem to think that its not until >about the third week that you should even consider hand nursing as a viable >alternative to finding a surrogate jill. As you're aware, I'm NOT a breeder, so being ignorant to the fact that one wouldn't even bother trying to save a life, I always go ahead and give it a go. >Ferrets are not rabbits. Well gooooooooooollly. Ya learn something new every day. >Rabbits are cheap compared to ferrets. Gee, in my little world all life is precious. Sandi Ackerman Best Little Rabbit, Rodent (mice are rodents too :-) and Ferret House Seattle, WA HouseBun Archives http://users.loa.com/~phause/HouseBun/ [Posted in FML issue 2583]