my other ferret

Question
Thank you for yout reply Jaquie, i will deffinatley take baby into the vet. Just one more question; how exactly do i ferret-proof my home to make sure it's safe enough for them to play?
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The text above is a follow-up to ...

-----Question-----
Hi jaquie,

Thank you again for your advice for bruiser, he is doing much better. We are just concentrating on getting him to gain weight. My question is about my other ferret, Baby. Baby has always been horribly thin. The doctor said she probably has Ibd and cannot store fat. He gave us medicine to help her store fat better but it didn't work so we stopped giving it to her. Well, in just the past couple of weeks she has put on alot of weight. We have been giving her the a/d food that was for bruiser, but she never ate enough of it to put on this much weight. I felt her belly and it's hard along with what feels like a few lumps. Could this be some sort of a disease or did she really put on weight? Is constipation causing her hard, round belly? Should I take her to the vet? She is acting, eating and drinking normally. Any info you might have would be a big help! Thanks again!

Sincerely,
Kristina
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Hi Kristina:

A/D is an EXCELLENT food for Baby to be on. It is very high in nutrients, extremely easily digestible(great for IBD) - I can't imagine what your vet had you feed her that could possibly be better!  I have a ferret with IBD and she was on A/D until she gained too much weight, so I switched her back to I/D, which is basically the same thing, but less fats, but still easily digestible high quality protein.

Anytime I feel a hard belly (usually means they have a bellyache too) and *especially* if I feel lump(s), I get suspicious of blockages. She could have had PARTIAL  blockages for a long time - they would totally account for 'wasting' (inability to gain weight).

I do think that Baby needs a checkover from the vet. If he's experienced with ferrets, he *should* give her a barium xray. They take a little bit of A/D and mix it with barium and feed it to the ferret. Then about 15 minutes later they take an xray - again about every 15 mins until it passes thru her entire intestinal system. If she has partial blockages (which I highly suspect because of the wasting, hard belly and lumps in belly) they *MAY* try to flush her thru with laxatives, or they will open her up and remove the obstructions.  

Partial obstructions are particularly dangerous because they can get stuck in one place in the gut and start an infection, or they can catch other little pieces of food or other ingested materials and eventually cause a total blockage, which is a "life and death - get it out NOW" situation you want to avoid.  For those reasons, I'd strongly encourage you to get the barium xrays.  You can ask before, if you need to, but my ferret had a barium xray best and I was shocked at how cheap it was. I was expecting it to be hundreds of dollars and I think it was something like $60 altogether!! That's cheap insurance in my book!    Plus, they did find a partial blockage, just I had suspected, on my ferret.

You might want to give your house a good going thru and be sure the ferrets aren't getting into anything that can cause blockages. Even if they can only get out to play in ONE ROOM that is blocked off from the rest of the house. Ferretproof, then double ferretproof the house. That's what I've done and as soon as I think it's ferretproofed, they show me where I've missed a place! LOL

BTW - be XXXXXtra careful of tinsel and holiday decorations. Tinsel especially, just cuts their little innards as it goes thru :-((

Best of luck - keep me updated?  Gentle hugs to Baby - and best wishes to her for straight AAAAAA's on her 'test' :-).........and Big Bruiser hugs to *our* big boy. Hope he keeps getting better!

jacquie

Answer
Hi Kristina:

Wow, that's a big question! :-)  I really really hope you will get the book "FERRETS FOR DUMMIES" by Kim Schilling - it's a great book for new and old ferret owners alike. It's really not that expensive if you get it at http://www.half.com .  It's not a boring book, but actually fun to read and the more you learn about your ferrets, the safer and happier they will be - and the easier your life (and your vet bills too!) will be; so I soo hope you will do that.  In the meantime, please don't hesitate to write to me. I really don't mind....just know there is a LOT more information in that book than I could ever give you here.

Here are two great websites about ferretproofing.  Between reading both of them, you should have a good idea. The closest calls I've had with my ferrets is one that likes rubberbands, and one comes on the newspaper every night! <sigh>

Anyway, here are two great sites for you - cut and paste them into your browser and read away .........

http://www.ferretcentral.net/index.php?categoryid=9&p2_articleid=9

http://www.ferretsr1.org/caring/ferretproofing.php


You can never read enough about things like ferretproofing, because it's never really done. Ferrets always seem to find something else that's bad for them! It's up to us to stay one step ahead of them.  You can get more info galore if you just do a search on 'ferretproofing' and it will bring up a lot of other sites that will all have different information on them; altho some will be the same, each will have something the others don't have.

Best of luck. Hope Baby does well and you can get her to the vet. Be sure to keep her on the A/D till you get there, okay?  Probably about three to four times a day is good...but be sure you get her little belly checked out so she doesn't end up with other problems from blockage,k?

Keep me updated! :-)

sincerely,
jacquie