From:
=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Gasparin_Bal=E1zs?=
Date: 2005-07-01 22:43:01 UTC
Subject: Re: [ferrethealth] baby ferrets
To: <ferrethealth@smartgroups.com>
Message-ID: <002801c57e8e$3d05c010$7202a8c0@onyx>
Hi,
> Hi everyone,I wonder if any of you might be able to give me some advice.
> Ive just aquired four baby ferrets,all
> brothers&sisters,about six weeks old.The problem is three of them have a
> slight limp on their back legs.
> Anybody got any idea what this is and what I can do to help.
I've met some such cases in the last / this year. The problem was either an
injury (broken bone), or calcium-related
problem. The ferret with broken bone has fully regenerated (the others I
know of are too young yet). The other
may be caused by many things, like not giving enough calcium to the mother
or the kits, over-dosing some vitamin
(I don't know which, and I don't know if it's true or not), and in one case
3 kit out of 7 was affected, and it is
suspected, that an antibiotics was responsible that was given when the kits
were about 5 weeks old, to cure
mastitis on the mother. As I've heard, the owner used her own medicine
without consultation with a vet.
You'll probably need x-ray to check the bones, sometimes a vet is able to
diagnose by just touching (if it's a calcium
related problem, the bones may be deformed). There might be other causes
that are unknown to me, too.
I'm not a vet, please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
Gaba