Post by danidee on Oct 4, 2020 10:43:12 GMT -5
Hey, all. I guess I should start out by saying that I have two ferrets - Moose, my boy who is a little over a year old with adrenal disease; and Mallory, my approximately 13 week old baby girl who I just picked up from a really shady pet store a couple of weeks ago. It’s like they’re taking turns to see who can worry me the most, but Mallory is the one I need some advice with.
I am not really sure what is going on with her. She is eating like a fiend and drinking plenty of water. Her activity levels are still high but may have taken a very small dip over the last couple of days, if at all. Overall, she is still acting like a baby ferret should. There’s really only two things with her that are weird: she vomited once on Friday (10/2/20) and her poops have been abnormal since then.
At the time of her vomiting, I attributed it to her eating too much too fast (because she was really going at it). She hasn’t thrown up since then or even gagged. The closest she came was a short spell of hiccups where I watched her like a hawk. That doesn’t concern me as much as her poop. While she was gagging and vomiting, she had a seemingly painful BM that was very runny and almost frothy. After that, it has been less runny, but now they are very small and thin with a kind of grainy looking texture. Sometimes they’ll look like they’re trying to go back to “normal”, other times they’re runny and pale, but most often over the last two days, they have been of the small and thin variety. She also seems to be going more frequently.
A little bit about Mallory’s day to day life:
After Moose’s adrenal disease scare (he now has the des implant and is making a wonderful turnaround), I have been extra cautious but quick to panic when it comes to my fur babies. They have only supervised play time in a very minimal “office” room in my house (except for their ever-growing toy collection) for two to three hours every day - sometimes more if I can swing it. She always goes NUTS when it’s playtime, and that’s not really changed. Like I said earlier, there’s maybe been a small energy drop, but it’s nothing that I would question or probably even notice if not for the weird poops.
She is now on ZuPreem ferret kibble, grain free. I had tried incorporating some of the not grain free ZuPreem kibble over the last couple of days (for some reason my vet seems very against grain free and raw foods?), but I stopped mixing it in with the grain free stuff after the weird poops started, hoping it was just a bad reaction to new food. She also has been given duk soup mixed with Beechnut chicken baby food, raw egg (against my vet’s overall advice for ferrets), and FerreTone. The raw egg seemed to help a little, as her poops went back to almost normal afterwards, but now we’re back to small and thin and frequent.
She now lives with her brother in a two-tier, four shelf Ferret Nation cage with plenty of blankets, hammocks, and tunnels for bedding. Up until last Wednesday, I had her in a separate cage as a kind of “quarantine” to see what her poops looked like, monitor her food intake, etc. All was well except a few green slimies the first few days she was with me, which I attributed to the stress of a new home.
I have checked their toys, their bedding, and the room that they play in several times since this all started on Friday. I can’t find anything with missing pieces or that looks like it might have been snacked on. I know they’re notorious for finding things to get into that they shouldn’t, but I’m genuinely at a loss here. It sounds like a partial blockage from what I’ve read, but would she still really be eating and drinking so ravenously?
I also noticed that she has a few of fleas on her. I gave her a flea bath with flea shampoo for cats and kittens (Advantage), but that seemed totally ineffective. I also took a nit comb to her and got about six or seven of them off of her before she got really frustrated with me. Moose is on a monthly Revolution flea preventative for puppies and kittens, but is she too young for the same treatment?
I plan to call our only local “exotic” vet first thing in the morning, but they aren’t really the best and seem limited both in knowledge and what they can do for ferrets... They are the ones who treat all of the ferrets for our local Petco, though, so I am thinking it’s better than nothing. My usual vet for my ferrets in the past (and Moose’s current vet) is four hours away from where I live, and they don’t seem to want to listen to what I tell them about my ferrets, and have given me some questionable advice recently (i.e. no grain free or raw eggs, chicken, etc.) in comparison to what I’ve read on here and other sources for ferret info. They also don’t have the capability of doing an ultrasound on ferrets. Getting her in there will be a bit of a wait (at least until Saturday if they could even get her in then) because of my work.
Any help or advice you guys could give would be so greatly appreciated. I feel like I’m at my wit’s end and that I’ve researched until I can’t anymore. If you want more information, please just let me know! Thanks again.
-One Very Tired Mama
I am not really sure what is going on with her. She is eating like a fiend and drinking plenty of water. Her activity levels are still high but may have taken a very small dip over the last couple of days, if at all. Overall, she is still acting like a baby ferret should. There’s really only two things with her that are weird: she vomited once on Friday (10/2/20) and her poops have been abnormal since then.
At the time of her vomiting, I attributed it to her eating too much too fast (because she was really going at it). She hasn’t thrown up since then or even gagged. The closest she came was a short spell of hiccups where I watched her like a hawk. That doesn’t concern me as much as her poop. While she was gagging and vomiting, she had a seemingly painful BM that was very runny and almost frothy. After that, it has been less runny, but now they are very small and thin with a kind of grainy looking texture. Sometimes they’ll look like they’re trying to go back to “normal”, other times they’re runny and pale, but most often over the last two days, they have been of the small and thin variety. She also seems to be going more frequently.
A little bit about Mallory’s day to day life:
After Moose’s adrenal disease scare (he now has the des implant and is making a wonderful turnaround), I have been extra cautious but quick to panic when it comes to my fur babies. They have only supervised play time in a very minimal “office” room in my house (except for their ever-growing toy collection) for two to three hours every day - sometimes more if I can swing it. She always goes NUTS when it’s playtime, and that’s not really changed. Like I said earlier, there’s maybe been a small energy drop, but it’s nothing that I would question or probably even notice if not for the weird poops.
She is now on ZuPreem ferret kibble, grain free. I had tried incorporating some of the not grain free ZuPreem kibble over the last couple of days (for some reason my vet seems very against grain free and raw foods?), but I stopped mixing it in with the grain free stuff after the weird poops started, hoping it was just a bad reaction to new food. She also has been given duk soup mixed with Beechnut chicken baby food, raw egg (against my vet’s overall advice for ferrets), and FerreTone. The raw egg seemed to help a little, as her poops went back to almost normal afterwards, but now we’re back to small and thin and frequent.
She now lives with her brother in a two-tier, four shelf Ferret Nation cage with plenty of blankets, hammocks, and tunnels for bedding. Up until last Wednesday, I had her in a separate cage as a kind of “quarantine” to see what her poops looked like, monitor her food intake, etc. All was well except a few green slimies the first few days she was with me, which I attributed to the stress of a new home.
I have checked their toys, their bedding, and the room that they play in several times since this all started on Friday. I can’t find anything with missing pieces or that looks like it might have been snacked on. I know they’re notorious for finding things to get into that they shouldn’t, but I’m genuinely at a loss here. It sounds like a partial blockage from what I’ve read, but would she still really be eating and drinking so ravenously?
I also noticed that she has a few of fleas on her. I gave her a flea bath with flea shampoo for cats and kittens (Advantage), but that seemed totally ineffective. I also took a nit comb to her and got about six or seven of them off of her before she got really frustrated with me. Moose is on a monthly Revolution flea preventative for puppies and kittens, but is she too young for the same treatment?
I plan to call our only local “exotic” vet first thing in the morning, but they aren’t really the best and seem limited both in knowledge and what they can do for ferrets... They are the ones who treat all of the ferrets for our local Petco, though, so I am thinking it’s better than nothing. My usual vet for my ferrets in the past (and Moose’s current vet) is four hours away from where I live, and they don’t seem to want to listen to what I tell them about my ferrets, and have given me some questionable advice recently (i.e. no grain free or raw eggs, chicken, etc.) in comparison to what I’ve read on here and other sources for ferret info. They also don’t have the capability of doing an ultrasound on ferrets. Getting her in there will be a bit of a wait (at least until Saturday if they could even get her in then) because of my work.
Any help or advice you guys could give would be so greatly appreciated. I feel like I’m at my wit’s end and that I’ve researched until I can’t anymore. If you want more information, please just let me know! Thanks again.
-One Very Tired Mama
