From:
teresa@mivox.com
Date: 2003-04-14 18:01:08 UTC
Subject: litterbox reference material
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-ID: <7804298.1050356968718.JavaMail.nobody@vanadium>
How's that for an odd post title? ;-)
I was wondering if there is a descriptive reference available online that
basically listed the various ways in which a ferret might have abnormal
feces, and what each one most commonly meant.... It seems to be one of
the first indications that something is wrong for a lot of problems, and a
succinct one-page list might be a good reference to have... For instance:
Black & Tarry: Blood in the stools. Most commonly caused by bleeding
ulcers.
Loose, 'Birdseed' looking: Malabsorption of certain nutrients. Commonly
caused by Inflammatory Bowel Disease, which can be caused by
bacterial or viral infection, or a food intolerance/allergy.
Etc., etc... I thought of this because the other day I saw quite a bit of
greenish, bird-seed-y, mucousy poops in the litter box. My usual policy,
unless there's obvious blood present, is to wait and see how things look
tomorrow.
The next day, everything looked perfectly normal, so I assume it was
one of their here-today-gone-tomorrow bugs. That seems to happen
quite a bit. Someone will have soft stools for a day or two, and then
they'll go back to normal. Or someone will have excessive mucous in
their stool for a day or two, and then right back to normal.
None of them have shown any behavioral indications of being under the
weather this week, so I don't know who was responsible for the nasty
green stuff, but it would have been handy to pull out a list of nasty poop
descriptions and say, "Oh, it could be this, so I guess I'd better watch for
that," or something of the sort.
[Moderator's note: There is just such a useful chart at
http://www.miamiferret.org/fhc/poop_chart.htm thanks to two FHL co-
moderators, Mike Janke and Dr. Bruce Williams. ]
End of ferrethealth Digest
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