From:
Edward Lipinski
Date: 2001-03-05 18:36:00 UTC
Subject: Re: [Ferret-Health-list] Re Biotin in Ferretone, like
almost not there??
Was it the good doctor Williams who referred to Linnatone as one of the
substances he give to his ferrets just recently? I beleive it was.
Had opportunity to check ingredients on a bottle of Linnatone and absent
thereon was the substance of biotin.
Since the Linnatone is shelved on food supplements for dogs and cats and
not necessarily for ferrets, it strikes me that biotin has no redeeming
value for the K9 and feline, but on every bottle of Ferretone, yep,
there it is at the bottom of the ingredients list - biotin at 13
micrograms per 473 milliliters of Ferretone.
Just for fun in calculating the ratio of biotin in micrograms to
milliliter of Ferretone, would that be the result of dividing 13 by 473
to yield = approx 0.03 micrograms biotin to one milliliter of Ferretone?
Golly, that's certainly not very much, is it? What is it, say like 3
hundreds of a microgram/ml? If we want to look at this quantity in
actual grams, what would it be? Let's see: 0.03 micrograms would be 0.03
times 10 to the minus 6, so moving the decimal point to the left six
places, it would look like this, nicht wahr?
0.000,000,03 grams of biotin in one milliliter of Ferretone! WOW! That
there biotin must sure be some powerful stuff, right? It's there in
tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny (that's 8 little "tinies")
quantity, and perhaps another way of notation would be like this: 3.0
times 10 to the minus eigth power.
You know, a vitamin like biotin that the manufacturer infuses into his
Ferretone, in such miniscule quantity, sure makes me wonder just what
this is all about.
Anybody out there interested in finding out? I am.
Edward Lipinski founder of F.E.R.R.E.T.S. N.W. Foundation, a nonprofit
shelter and husbandry.