Liquid poops and grinding teeth in a kit

[Deleted]

Hi there, I'm looking for some advice about a kit of roughly 14 weeks of age please. He was from a rescue shelter, and the only information we have on him is that his mother died when he and his siblings were only 1 week old, since then they were hand reared on offel and lacto free milk. When we first brought him home he was bouncing about and acting as we would expect him to, but the past couple of weeks he has been slowing down a bit. I had a bit of a scare one night two weeks ago when I heard him crying, and he was straining to go to the toilet. When he did go it was very liquidy and had some blood in, so I took him to the emergency vet who gave him painkillers and antibiotic injections and by the morning you wouldn't know there was anything wrong with him! 

The past few days however he has been slowing down.. he's become lethargic and not as active as his brother (adopted at the same time as him). His appetite has been decreasing too, and I noticed he grinds his teeth after the small amount of food he has. Since yesterday morning I've been syringe feeding him duck soup (boiled chicken, his normal kibble and tinned pumpkin blended up) every 1 hour and 30 mins day and night after a noticed several poops in a row were just liquid and gas. His poops have got firmer pretty much straight away I started to syringe feed, and he seems a little more lively this morning but still wanting to lay down after a short play of 1-2 minutes and he still grinds his teeth after his syringe feed.

Attached is a pic of his poops before syringe feeding if that will help. I'm just looking for any advice please, if anyone else has experienced this with a kit or has any tips to try for him? I have an appointment for him on Tuesday at our normal vets (they are closed tomorrow as I live in England and it's a 'bank holiday Monday'), and I'm really not keen on taking him to the emergency vets again, they were honest enough to say to me that they hardly get ferrets in and they were not sure what else to advise..

Thank you for reading,

Joanne

[bitbyter]

He needs to see a vet asap. Diarrhea in young kits is very serious as it dehydrates them so much and they need such a high intact of food. It sounds like he has some kind of bacterial infection as the grinding of teeth usually indicates digestive pain. He most likely needs a longer course of anibiotics (a few weeks) to kill off whatever he has.

[msav]

The strange thing is every one of my new young petshop ferrets ground their teeth while eating their kibble. Koufos ground his teeth from the day I got him until we got him on raw. (4 month ago) and he is now 5 years old. I had taken him to the vet about it quite a few time and never could figure out what was wrong with him. Must have been the kibble. He has not ground his teeth since.

Mogwai ground his teeth while eating from October till we switched him to raw in February. Again took him to the vet and could not find anything wrong with him.

Bleu and Taz ground their teeth for the month after we got him while they were still on kibble.

This cannot just be coincidence. I figured it was normal with young kits.


this was just teeth grinding with no other symptoms though. 


blood in the poop is worrisome. 

[Heather]

I'm thinking you may be dealing with a floating blockage? is this possible? Your little one needs a vet ASAP and waiting until Tues may just be too late. The grinding teeth, the stomach upset, the unproductive backing up in the litter box all point to either a blockage or severe stomach upset (bacterial overload, ulcerated colitis, comes to mind) Any of these can be dire in a an adult ferret in a kit...catastrophic. What does your rescue say? Are they offering you any support? You may have to go to the ER vet to get some sub q fluids to help your little one. Keep pushing fluids and trying to get some food into him, but he really needs vetting
ciao

[Deleted]

Thank you all very much for your replies. As soon as my husband got home we went back to the emergency vets, and they kindly phoned a specialist vet for further advice; one painkiller injection, antibiotic injection, rehydration injection (he was an unhappy fuzz) and some antibiotics to take home as well as rehydration powder later.. He is happily munching away on some food, and lapping water by himself. We are still taking him to our regular vets on Tuesday, and we have taken a stool sample before he took antibiotics to see if our vets on Tuesday can run any tests.

Still got the alarm set to go off throughout the night to give him food and water and generally check how he is getting on. *Breeeath* Oh these ferrets.. Giving mum a panic attack.. thank you again everyone for your comments. Oh and this little buggers name is Roland :-)

[Thérèse]

How's Roland doing?