We have a really serious problem here. Last night, at about 1AM, the ferret we'd been boarding for just over 24 hours starting hacking and retching. She's a little sable girl, under two years old to my eye, and her owner tried hard though he didn't know too much about her. We fixed up her cage (no more shavings, an added shelf, all that) and mixed a very small amount of our fuzzies' food into hers so she could get used to it in case she runs out. And she did get a chance to meet the others, which she seemed okay with. In fact, yesterday afternoon she was tearing around the house like a ferret in fast forward. I was expecting some runny poops from the stress of the move and all that, but not what I saw last night... Her whole body was shaking and heaving. She was trying to go to the bathroom, and having difficulty. After a minute or so of this, she vomited. What poop did show up was actually just yellowish liquid, about as thick as egg white, and close to the same color. After a few minutes, that was what was coming out of her mouth, too. She stopped and began to run around, seemed fine. I sat her down and convinced her to drink a little bit of water while I called the emergency vet. After some near-hysterical bits of conversation with a receptionist, I got the vet's final message: it's just gastroenteritis, caused by stress. Withhold food and water for a few hours, see if it stops. I refuse to withhold water from a creature that can become fatally dehydrated in 12 hours. Also, having dealt with my older male ferret for a while, I've seen some of what stress can do. It doesn't look like this. An hour later, she started doing it again, only there was no food to vomit--so all that came up was more yellowish stringy stuff, a little browner than what was coming out her rear end. Back on the phone with the vet, who reassured me that it was okay. I decided that she wouldn't die before morning, and that I didn't want to take her to that vet anyway. She slept for four hours or so, then got up this morning and went to the litterbox. No serious straining, but once again the only stuff that showed up looked like runny egg whites, although there was more of it and it was roughly the shape of a poop. Then she nosed around a bit, hacked a little but didn't vomit, and went back to sleep. I'm not sure if it's lethargy, since the whole crew tends to sleep through the morning. We're going to a vet today, but I have to go to work and have to send her with my boyfriend. He's good with ferrets, but I want to be there with her too. Her owner really cares about her very much... all I can think is that it sounds a little like an intestinal blockage, but none of my ferts have ever had that problem, so I really don't know what the symptoms are. I still haven't found a truly good ferret vet around here (Portland, Maine), so if any of you have any information, I would be very grateful. For now, she's being watched carefully, and I'm making sure she gets plenty of fluids. I don't really know what else to do. Whenever my babies look under the weather, out comes the duck soup--but a ferret who can't seem to keep food down doesn't need to be trying new kinds of food. Sorry about the length of this, but I'm really worried and I figured details could be important. On another topic: All six of my ferrets are Marshall ferrets, the rescued ones and the bought ones. I'm not any crazier about huge breeding farms for ferrets than I am about huge breeding farms for dogs or cats--I want to say that at the outset. But I live in Maine, and there are NO ferret breeders here--and only one small shelter (ten or fewer adoptable ferrets at all times, or so I've heard). I know that MF babies are seven to eight weeks old when they ship out, unless MF is lying about their birthdates, which would be kind of ridiculous, and I also know that they're guaranteed to be free of all contagious diseases for at least 48 hours after their arrival. I've seen the paperwork. I'm not defending them, exactly. They're essentially a ferret mill, which I don't like at all. But, at the same time, the vast majority of the ferrets out there are from MF originally. And my fuzzies are wonderful critters and companions. As for Path Valley Farms, does anyone here actually have any experience with them? I've read their ads and recently discovered that they wrote the Barron's book about ferrets--the book just about every new ferret owner buys. I read it, and it reads like a PV advertisement. What really bothered me was that in the short section about ferret diseases at the end of the book, there was not one single word about ECE, insulinomas, or adrenal problems--three of the most common (identifiable) ferret illnesses. So I'm a little bit concerned about them. Any more information would be great. Jen and the Crazy Business plus One Sick Ferret [log in to unmask] Or Dennis at [log in to unmask] [Posted in FML issue 2682]