Well I hang my head in shame

For the past 17 years I haven’t had any problems with my ferrets’ teeth. In fact, my vet has always complimented me on the great condition of all my guys’ teeth so when Seamus stopped eating his kibble, it never occurred to me that he might have problems with his tooth, or teeth even!

I wrote about Seamus’ glaucoma a couple of months ago and for those of you who didn’t read the article, you can see his blind right eye again in this photo …

This makes me FURIOUS! Utterly and absolutely FURIOUS!

I was looking at my ferret FB page when I saw a post from an English ferret owner saying …

“This was one of three kits that Cathy Wareing has rescued from a shop called Brunos in Billing Northampton. They were charging £39.95 each. Clearly two of these kits are too young to be away from their mother. The third kit is slightly older. They were in a small cage with no bedding, just a cardboard tube and kibble that was too big from them to eat.”

I get a lot of emails from new and old-time ferret owners at my site asking me various questions about their ferrets, mainly asking for advice on what to do when their ferret is sick or asking questions about breeding.

Then a couple of years ago I read about Ferret Health Advancement at MSU.  Dr Matti Kiupel was doing a lot of research in a number of ferret illnesses, like coronaviruses, rotaviruses & coccidiosis. He’s also working with David Wilson researching the prognostication and carcinogenesis of adrenal cortical neoplasms. But, of course, with all things, money is necessary to further the research for these diseases so the department also has a page for donations.

Little things happen and with ferrets, so often little things make us scratch our heads and wonder why is this happening.

Such was the case of Kimiko on Sunday morning!

I’d given the ferrets their smoothy and, as you might be aware, I’ve been adding just a small bit of coconut oil butter to their smoothy for a little bit of added oomph. The ferrets all love it and it’s totally benign so apart from making their poop smell like coconut (!), it doesn’t hurt them to eat it.

There have been a few Google alerts in my mailbox to warn owners about xylitol and ferrets in the past few weeks and just today there was a story about a vet who examined a ferret suffering from liver damaged caused by eating Tic Tacs.

It seemed a good time to remind all ferret owners, both old-timers and newbies, about the dangers that lurk in our houses that could cause problems for our little guys.

Xylitol

Xylitol is a sugar-free additive found to be toxic to dogs for a while but now it’s been found that ferrets which have eaten products which contain xylitol have the same bad reactions to it as dogs.