From:
"Marie Bartholdsson"
Date: 2004-09-02 10:17:08 UTC
Subject: RE: [ferrethealth] RE: melatonin/daylight dilemma
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-ID: <4536327.1094132010078.JavaMail.nobody@vanadium.smartgroups.com>
>From: sukiec@optonline.net
>but for any time when they are not getting at least 14 hours of darkness in
>each 24 hour period I would supect that they do need the added melatonin.
>
Where I live (Sweden, lat 61N) we have about 5 hours of darkness during the
shortest nights in the summer, and about 18 hours of darkness in the longest
nights in the winter. All of my ferrets are kept under the natural
photoperiods of this latitude (most live outside and they are also fed an
all natural diet). While most of them are spayed/neutered very late in life,
I also have ferrets that have been fixed earlier and lived most of their
life as spayed/neutered. I've kept ferrets like this for 16 years, yet there
hasn't been one single case of adrenal disease. If I only count those who
have lived under these conditions for at least 5 years (not counting the
younger or those who died early from accidents) that will be a total of 21
ferrets up till now.
During the years I have sold 49 kits. I haven't been able to track all of
them, but most, and even though the majority of those have been kept indoors
and fed kibble there haven't been any adrenal until one kit born two years
ago which might have developed adrenal disease this year (have not been
confirmed yet). That kit is also from a slightly different blood line than I
would normally use. When I look around, I see more and more of the other
breeders get adrenal in their lines. And those ferrets all share common
blood lines.
This makes me wonder if there is also a genetic component in addition to
environment factors, early altering, food, viruses or whatever the cause
might be.