From:
sukiec@optonline.net
Date: 2006-03-25 19:01:55 UTC
Subject: [ferrethealth] RE: trouble going potty
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Quick point: although they are in the same age group they may not be siblings. Shipments from the farms tend to be based upon age in weeks and weight.
Is he urinating? Is urination difficult for him?
Is he eating?
Is he drinking?
There are two things which immediately come to mind:
The first is an intestinal blockage. In a kit these are typically caused by a ferret swallowing something he should not have swallowed, a foreign body, though there can be other causes. Sometimes these can cause perforation. Complete blockages cause toxin build-up and preferably are gotten out within 24 hours of the complete blockage beginning. If it does not come out naturally it needs to come our with surgery for the ferret to survive. This is the the most common cause for the symptoms you describe. The ferret usually has swallowed rubber, or latex, or dried fruit, or a chunk of carrot, or a nut, or rawhide, or an eraser, or an ear plug, or those round things found as feet on appliances and to prevent cabinet doors from banging, or some other thing that is not digestible by ferrets.
The second is a urinary blockage from stones. These tend to also cause trouble defecating, in fact, that is sometimes the first symptom. If he can not urinate well enough the vet needs to remove the excess urine with a needle to prevent bladder rupture and to prevent the urine from backing up and starting hydronephrosis. This is not something that can wait even too many hours.
If there is a stone then surgery is needed, and the stone MUST go out for analysis, while the urine MUST be looked at for pH. There are two types of stones which can be found, but they need OPPOSITE approaches. The first is struvite, and that calls from less vegetable matter in the diet and sometimes for a urine acidifier because the urine is too alkaline. The second is cystine (two of our ferrets get these, one male, one female, both with bodily neural crest variant fur markings) and that calls for less protein in the diet and the urine will naturally be too acidic. There also are medical approaches, and then your vet can find consultation from either Dr. Thomas Kawasaki or Dr. Michael Dutton (who also has a publication on this) for how to successfully treat in ferrets, or the details can be found in the FHL Archives in this post about another female ferret with cystine stones:
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/browse.php?msg=YG13030
If it is cytokine there is study looking into why the numbers of these appears to have increased in ferrets in recent years. With genetics also being involved they are also looking to see if they might spot some of the genetic variations that could create other vulnerabilities:
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/browse.php?msg=SG12669
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/browse.php?msg=SG12660
Cystine stones are less common than struvite, but less known about than the other. Again, when there is not defecation but there is urination the typical problem in a kit is an ingested foreign body causing a blockage.
In a kit also watch out for the possibility of a rectal prolapse caused by straining. There is also information on those in the archives:
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/browse.php?msg=YG1285
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/browse.php?msg=YG1265
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