|
Post by Sherry on Dec 27, 2017 8:32:57 GMT -5
Poor pups lol. At least she doesn't prance around with it taunting them!
|
|
|
Post by runningdog on Jan 1, 2018 14:14:40 GMT -5
Weighday strikes again. It’s possible the boys have reached their full weight for this winter - they’re just touching 6 months now, iirc, and they’ve both dropped a few grams this week. It’ll be interesting seeing how they balance out losing their winter fat against continuing to grow. Overall food consumption has dropped back to just 1kg a day amongst the 8 of them, not counting the extra mouse the golden boys get for lunch after I’ve carried the older lads back home. They adore their mice - the moment I open the door for the older boys to leave, Ajax and Achilles are over by the fridge scampering up my mother’s shins for their mice, and while Ajax always carries his off to eat privately behind the filing cabinet, Achilles flops right in the middle of the room on the carpet and scoffs there, in the open! Confident, much? Achilles - 1.92kg (down 30g) Ajax - 1.73kg (down 40g). Once the weather improves that fat old slob Loony is going on a diet. He’s lazy and greedy and has bingo wings. Ferrets shouldn’t have bingo wings! On the other hand I hate to diet any critter in the winter when they need their blubber for insulation.
|
|
|
Post by Sherry on Jan 2, 2018 10:55:44 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by runningdog on Jan 6, 2018 18:03:25 GMT -5
I had to rescue Loony several times tonight - Achilles was busy stashing the poor critter! It seemed every couple of minutes I’d hear plaintive little squeaks as Achilles scruff-dragged him across the floor yet again, while Achilles himself did that happy-ferret-panting-noise that the boys do when wrestling together. I suspect it’s all tied up in the entire hob coming of age/ young hob taking top dog position thing that’s going on. Ajax, being far less self-assertive and self-confident, merely jumps on Loony and washes his ears for him. Poor old Loon!
|
|
|
Post by Sherry on Jan 8, 2018 8:00:20 GMT -5
Oh poor Loony! He sounds like he doesn't quite know what hit him
|
|
|
Post by runningdog on Jan 8, 2018 9:32:46 GMT -5
Poor old Loony indeed! (Actually he’s not that old - he’s only 5). Today Achilles literally wiped the floor with him..... I’m not sure who it was who spilled water all over the kitchen floor - it might have been anyone prancing around, though Joker sometimes deliberately sloshes the dish about (and occasionally turns it upside down). Whoever it was, they left a nice puddle on the floor. Achilles was scruff-dragging Loony around again and towed the poor lad through the sogginess several times, backwards and forwards! The floor was drier, admittedly, but Loony was very soggy and bedraggled. I rescued him and wrapped him in a nice warm towel off the radiator - we have sub-zero temps again (it’s winter....) and I wasn’t putting a sodden ferret back out to freeze! I noticed something interesting today - when Loony is being dragged by Achilles I’ve heard one lot of quiet dooking and one set of protesting-sounding squeaks going on, but as Loony passed my feet today (towing very smoothly flat on his back) it was his tummy that was moving in time with the dooks, which means it’s Achilles producing the small plaintive squeaks while he’s hauling Loony about the floor! Maybe it’s the effort of dragging that much weight around? They’ve had a quail today - she’s been looking a bit peaky recently and seemed to be off her legs this morning, so I culled her and just put the fresh corpse into the cage with the boys. When it comes to small critters, ferrets are unbeatable receivers of fallen stock.
|
|
|
Post by unclejoe on Jan 9, 2018 18:28:20 GMT -5
OMG bingo wings. Pandy had those but I never heard them called that. She had what I thought were fat deposits but could have been lymphoma. She later developed a big one in her crotch that grew really fast and eventually she lost the use of her legs. If you feel lumps you might want to get them checked.
Yoshi and Scamps went thru the drag me stash me thing. First it was Yoshi acting like a jerk to young Scamp. I'd never seen him act mean in all of his 3 years, but he was vicious. As soon as Scamp got to Yoshi's size, roles were reversed and that went on for 3-4 months. Now they're ok together
|
|
|
Post by runningdog on Jan 9, 2018 21:00:52 GMT -5
Hmm.... the bulges in Loony’s armpits are perfectly symmetrical, non-tender, feel like blubber. He has a glossy, soft, dense coat, bright beady little eyes, a calm, friendly temperament, the normal amount of curiosity for anything going on, seems to have plenty of energy when he’s awake (although at his age, he does sleep more than the youngsters - though not appreciably more than Joker and Bane who’re a year or two younger) and his droppings are perfectly normal. He’s lived outdoors without artificial light all his life, wasn’t castrated until he was a year old, raw fed except for the occasional lean period when he’s had high-quality kibble. He has always been a hungry beggar, reflected in his size, and he’s never been one to do more than he has to do to achieve his aims. He’s not the kind of ferret who’ll run across the floor when a gentle amble will do - though dangle a mouse in front of him and he’ll break the sound barrier to get there before anyone else! I’ll get him checked over, though, now you raise the possibility. Better to be sure. I want to get them all jabbed for distemper this year anyway - at the moment only Angus has had a distemper jab and I’m hoping to do more taking-ferrets-out-in-public displays this year so they’d better all get protected. Distemper’s not that common in the UK since the vast majority of dogs are vaccinated yearly, but there are small outbreaks from time to time. Better safe than sorry!
|
|
|
Post by runningdog on Jan 11, 2018 9:48:52 GMT -5
Some weights:
Bane - 1.59kg Ajax - 1.79kg Joker - 1.57kg Achilles - 2.1kg Loony - 2.15kg
Loony is just clinging to his ‘biggest ferret’ title by his claw-tips, but Achilles is biting his scruff in a very close second place (literally, just at the moment - Loony is being towed around the floor again as I type; he looks resigned). Both Ajax and Achilles have put weight on since last time - Ajax is up by 60g, Achilles by 180g, so I spoke too soon speculating about their growth levelling off. The older boys are fluctuating gently around their winter weights, neither gaining much nor losing much, which is about what you’d expect.
|
|
|
Post by Sherry on Jan 12, 2018 8:08:34 GMT -5
Poor, poor Loony
|
|
|
Post by runningdog on Jan 15, 2018 14:39:59 GMT -5
Loony is still making his way around the kitchen from one hiding place to another and getting caught and towed regularly by Achilles. Ajax and Achilles are both being ambushed and wrestled by Joker. Bane is getting on with things in his own quiet way, usually upside down in a tube somewhere. Life is slightly more complicated than usual just now as my Standard Rex rabbit doe keeled over this morning, leaving me with a nestful of unweaned rabbit kits to hand-rear. They’re in the slightly-heated conservatory with the current clutch of quail, just out of the brooder and hardening off ready to go out to the unheated shed. I’ll have to feed the rabbit kits about 5 times a day to start with, since they absolutely loathe and detest the flavour of cat milk replacer. Hopefully in a few days they’ll get used to the strange new taste and learn to lap, which will be much safer than syringe-feeding them! They’re 13 days old, so eyes just open and they can groom themselves (and have strong opinions about people, hands and strange things shoved in their mouths), but the risk of them inhaling their milk and getting pneumonia is very high when syringe fed, even at the ultra-slow hundredth-of-a-millilitre per mouthful rate I’m using. Fingers crossed they survive. It does mean I unavoidably smell of tasty little rabbits while dealing with the ferrets, though......
|
|
|
Post by Sherry on Jan 16, 2018 8:04:41 GMT -5
Poor wee orphans Any idea what happened to mom?
|
|
|
Post by runningdog on Jan 16, 2018 10:46:13 GMT -5
Ghost, the doe, developed gastro-intestinal stasis - which kills rabbits horribly fast. She was bouncing round the shed on Sunday stealing hay from the bale, looked a bit quiet at midnight when I did last rounds (but she often looked a bit quiet at midnight) and was hunched up, cold, withdrawn and grinding her teeth, at breakfast time; allowing for me calling the vet and driving her there, she was dead within half an hour of me seeing she was ill. It’s possible she stole some carrots from the sack and pigged out too heavily or picked up something off the floor of the shed - I don’t know. Why she should suddenly come to grief, given that she’d had the run of that shed most of her life since she was born in it, I don’t know either!
Given how low Ghost’s blood pressure, hydration levels and temperature were when the vet couldn’t get any of them to measure, and how fat and perky the kits were, I suspect she fed them during the night before she got too bad. I also suspect if she hadn’t had fed them, she might have had more fluids in her own system and might have lasted long enough to get a line into her ear vein and rehydrate her, which is what the vet was trying to do when she dropped dead in our hands. Such is life!
The kits seem perky and have swallowed some milk replacer, under protest. The weather’s turned nippy here and dropped below zero again, so I’ve put the artificial hen brooder heater over them for a bit of comfort. One peed on me while being fed this morning, so at least there’s enough hydration in them for that! Fingers crossed they survive the next week - after that the risks diminish somewhat and they should be perfectly ok by the time they reach 4-5 months - if I can get them that far!
The outside ferrets have fresh rabbit for today’s food, since they can’t possibly ‘catch’ gut stasis from a gutted and otherwise healthy rabbit corpse..... I dislike wasting a corpse; it feels disrespectful of the critter to just throw the body away and I’d rather feed my ferrets than just the worms.
|
|
|
Post by Sherry on Jan 17, 2018 10:05:59 GMT -5
That is hard to lose them that fast. And I fully get using the corpse. Can't say I blame you.
|
|
|
Post by runningdog on Jan 17, 2018 17:04:51 GMT -5
I think the time has come to order implants for Ajax and Achilles. They’re getting a bit whiffy on the downwind side (I stuck my nose in Achilles’ fur as I was carrying him in this afternoon and thought, cor, that’s definitely a hob! ) plus they’re beginning to mount the other boys. I’ll give the vet a ring tomorrow, find out what price they’re offering on implants, then get them booked in for microchips and implants.... might as well get everything done at once, unless there’s any reason not to!
|
|