From:
FurTulsa
Date: 2001-02-25 06:07:00 UTC
Subject: Food/Protien Questions
Okay, since I see the subject is already out here... I'll ask
something that has bugged me for a while now.
A while back, we got in a rescue who was 4 years old and had
been fed nothing but "Tender Vittles" cat food it's whole
life. The owner had just gotten a clean bill of health a month
earlier, although I do know the clinic who did this knows
zilch about ferrets.
*Thinking* it was the best thing to do... I weaned the ferret
over to a good quality mix of ferret food. About 3 weeks after
intake, she had a horrible seizure and basically dropped over
dead. I requested an necropsy. On the death report, our vet
found Insulinoma, Ulcers, Perionitis, a "hardly functioning
bright orange colored" liver and a couple other things I
forget offhand. She wrote up that almost everything was the
result of long term poor diet.
It was also concluded that since she HAD been on a food with
high sugar content for so long, that her system had likely
found a way to balance it and by giving her good ferret food,
it threw her functions off, triggering the Hypoglycemic
seizure.
SO my biggest question is this: The times we get such cases...
are we better off to leave them at least partially on the
cruddy food? Can they not handle the shock of good food after
so long? But is continuing to feed bad food only contributing
to the other problems? Is there a specialized form of ferret
diet that would be better?
For now, my system is weaning them onto either my mix for
older ferrets or the mix which includes Science Diet L/D.