From:
sukiec@optonline.net
Date: 2005-11-11 17:31:39 UTC
Subject: Re: [ferrethealth] Re Age at Eye Opening Re: [ferrethealth] Digest 10 Nov 2005
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
> I am only a hobby breeder with normal only one litter a year and I
> don't breed every year. Not realising the consequences I let my old
> bloodline die out in the 90s. I'm sorry to say in the last 10 years I'm
> finding the health/quality of the new kits I've bought to introduce new
> blood into my business has gone downhill.
...
> I have looked at to buy this year shows fancy colouring contaminating the
> bloodline
Sorry about the long quote needed for continuity.
That is the same as what happened here in the U.S.
Steve and I have had ferrets for approaching 25 years and before the fancies became so popular we saw longer periods of life without adrenal growths or insulinoma and almost never encountered either. We also had our longest lived then in terms of rates of long lives. We still have lower rates and usually later onsets than a number of other people seem to have for adrenal growths or insulinoma (though nowhere near as low as some achieve) despite having early neuters from a range of sources but nothing like during our first decade with ferrets -- so part of the equation seems to be home care issues. Back then there were almost no fancies sold, then one of the mid-sized farms started pushing them (the same farm to first begin selling kits under 8 weeks of age in our area) followed by private breeders and then others. Clumping lympho seemed to be the same since we encountered that once before fancies were so common and once afterward. (BTW, all but one of our ferrets have always been early neuters.)
When we encountered genetic problems back then it was sometimes inbreeding but it usually was someone who had ferrets bred in with fur fitch stock, or selling straight fur fitch stock. Fur fitch were never bred for health or longevity and tended to be short lived and sometimes aggressive. The domestic stock we had and knew of back then before there was so much fancy genetics mixed in so commonly, though, was typically very healthy. I have been told (BUT HAVE NOT VERIFIED) that another of the mid-sized U.S. farms began as a fur fitch farm, BTW, then found the pet industry more lucrative. I do not know if that is correct, so am putting it out there as a consideration for another possible way that longevity can become affected genetically in pet stock.
I really think that foolish breeding for appearance without first monitoring health and longevity led to rate and on-set age differences of a number of health problems by introducing vulnerabilities, or increasing the vulnerabilities genetically here in the U.S. It certainly fits our experience over time, and now it sadly appears to also fit your experience.
BTW, since unfortunately, many of the fancies are Neural Crest Genetic Variants here many systems are affected. Neural Crest Genetic Variants are a very hot area for human medical genetic investigation. According to something I found in a search at NIH months ago, one of the most recent areas the NIH is starting to have looked into is into in relation to these variations is kidney problems (which pleases us since our two with cystine stone formation problems on diets over 35% protein both have neural crest variant markings -- neither with the head marking but both with extraneous body and limb white spots and splotches -- so we need more info on this ourselves). Among the medical problems KNOWN to increase IN RATE in mammals (i.e. not all will have the problems and there are those without neural crest genetic variants who have other causes or co-causes (if there can be such a word) of these problems with some of the neural crest variants are: cardiomyopathy (especially hypertrophic but to a lesser extend dilative), malignancies (for a few types), syndactyly and polydactyly, dysphagia (trouble swallowing right), jaw malformations, deafness, messed up GI innervation, and much more.
One of the best ways right now to look at known info on neural crest variations in mammals is by getting or borrowing the most recent text books or journals of human medical genetics counselors. Highly recommended!
Chris knows about this genetic consideration, but for those who do not, the neural crest is a very early fetal area (before there are actual organs) the cells of which develop into a range of later cell types (mostly nerves, but also pigment, some ear structures, and more) and migrate to what become many areas of the body. That is why so many things can be damaged by altering those early fetal cells and it is why there is "variable expression" (some generations seeming fine or having only a few problems but other individuals having major health consequences).
Geneticist, Dr. Brett Middleton put it most accurate when he wrote about neural crest variant ferrets in:
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/browse.php?msg=YG3069
BEGIN QUOTE
> OK, make that three - What is your personal opinion with regard to
> the breeding of these individuals?
I, myself, would not. As I see it, there are only two other choices:
breed them without regard for health (not very ethical), or embark on a
full-scale program to develop healthy strains of marked ferrets (which
would involve large amounts of inbreeding and ruthless culling, with
all the attendant heartbreak). All for the sake of a characteristic
that is of no particular benefit to the animals or the species. Look
at all the horrible things that have been done to so many breeds of
dog, cat and livestock -- all resulting from breeding programs that
treat animals as some kind of artwork to be molded according to some
abstract esthetic standard divorced from any concept of biological
reality.
The responsibility of breeders to consider the well-being of the animal
in their selection programs is an aspect of animal welfare that is too
often neglected. Too many people who would never consider beating or
starving their animals suddenly seem to lose all sense of ethical
limits when it comes to breeding them.
END QUOTE
Veterinarian, Dr. John Lewington has been looking continually at genetic medical vulnerabilities in ferrets. See pages 92 and 93 of his current text for the ones now in print in a vet text, and watch things he writes for more info. This is an important area which is still too neglected in many ferret vet texts which is truly sad. People know how important it is to dogs and cats; they know how important it is to humans, but they forget how important it is to ferrets, and too few ferret breeders keep good and reasonably complete health and longevity records even now (THOUGH DOING SO HAS HAPPILY INCREASED ACCORDING TO WHAT SOME BREEDERS HAVE SAID).
(Okay, genetic problems in ferrets is one of my hot buttons but it derives from seeing a lot of bad health changes over the decades and doing a lot of reading...)
Ferret-Genetics in Yahoogroups has a lot on such studies and the abstracts and links to many references can be found there, though sadly some great ones seem to have been lost to the archives through age. Pubmed is also recommended.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Ferret-Genetics/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi
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