From:
Tonytclarke@aol.com
Date: 2006-05-01 14:01:13 UTC
Subject: [ferrethealth] Sudden behaviour change (2) was Sudden behaviour change
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
I have condensed the combined relative posts on this subject.
Sue (5y/o) has always been a gentle and friendly ferret with people and
ferrets alike. Today she climbed onto my lap and started lick my fingers as she
usually does every so often. Suddenly she started lick harder and harder and
then to nip my fingers (She has never raised a tooth to anyone before, ever).
She then took one finger crosswise in her mouth with her canines beyond the
finger, she bit down really hard and started to move backwards towards the
floor and pull my hand until she was hanging down by her teeth. I told her NO
and opened her mouth with my other hand and put her on the floor. She then kept
repeating this until I put her in her cage and washed my hands in case there
was something she could smell. After 30 mins I let her out and she
immediatly repeated the same behaviour this time refusing to let go and hissing loudly
when I extracted my finger.The only way I stopped her was by standing up and
then she hissed even more. This continued until I put them both in the cage
after about 4 hrs. I understand about ferrets becoming attracted by and
possessive of toys etc. She has never been possessive over toys or food but this
was so out of character and so persistant I wondered if anyone had seen this
sort of thng before.
Oh, and it was any finger on either hand.
Sue again tried this behaviour 2 days later so I let her 'drag' me, she took
me to the back of a cupboard (this is her route to her favorite daytime
sleeping den - the top drawer). At this point she couldnt get me any further but
just pulled and pulled, I extracted my finger and you could see her
practically stamping her paws with frustration and hissing like crazy.
She has never taken any food into this drawer or any toys, in fact she very
rarely hides food anywhere.
The behaviour has persisted and seem to be a <mothering> kind of thing.
My vet managed to find a lab in the UK to do hormone tests.
The results are shown below together with values from the archive. Tennesee
panel (Betsy Bailey) .
steroid SI units mean +/- SD Upper Normal C/O Lab Results For Sue My
comments
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Cortisol nmol/L 53 +/- 42 140 83
17 OHP nmol/L 0.2 +/- 0.3 0.8 <1.0 Insufficient accuracy?
Estradiol pmol/L 107 +/- 38 180 <10.0 Very low, can this be right?
Androstenadione nmol/L 6.6 +/- 4.1 15 Not tested
DHEAS nmol/L 10 +/- 9 28 Not tested
Why was estradiol result of <10.0 assumed to be normal by the lab?
Further behavior changes, Sue has now started to be increasingly
aggressive/irritable with her companion and me and possesive of a furry toy.
Could this be Addisonian? (low estrogen (estradiol), irritability). Do
ferrets ever get Addisons disease?
Tony.
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