From:
"Sukie Crandall"
Date: 2007-08-02 15:34:40 UTC
Subject: [ferrethealth] Re: FIGHTING FERRETS!!!!! HELP!!!!
To: ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com
Since this has not happened before check Ozzie's
health for a possible adrenal growth starting, and
check the health of the baby.
We only twice had serious (blood drawing and in
one case a serious attempt to kill) long term failure
of an elder to accept others. The first was not the
extremely violent one but she was a retired older
breeder who came to us after a mounting male bit
through an eye of hers and she never trusted other
non-kit ferrets again (even ones she trusted as kits).
The other was an alpha female who was wonderful
with all others but would roll a specific kit onto her
back and try to rip out her throat. The kit turned
out to have multiple, severe deformations and to be
severely intellectually impaired (even having trouble
with ferret body language). I think the alpha was
showing "culling" behavior, and she was seriously
out to kill. (Something that never happened before
or after.)
The deformations became obvious with
growth, BTW. As a kit she was unusually beautiful
-- heck as an adult she was, too -- with long and
lush, silken, straight coat, short face, but unusually
bulky and not inclined to curve her back unless she
was stationary. She turned out to have both hard and
soft tissue deformations as well as being diagnosed as
having acrondoplastic dwarfism and also an intellectual
impairment (greatly impaired). She had asthma as well,
and she developed arthritis. We managed to get her
6 years but in the end she developed a large number of
serious medical conditions simultaneously, a number of
which even alone would be terminal such as liver cysts,
a heart tumor, cardiomyopathy, insulinoma in bad
locations in the pancreas, and more. We even managed
to get her emotionally and comfy in life; she learned to
know when she was getting too excited or too nervous
and she would turn her back on the people and lie down,
giving herself a time-out to calm down before she could
accidently mess up.
Now, what you describe is much less violent and within
the range of dominance behaviors we've seen, but you
said that this hasn't happened with that older ferret
before so it makes sense tp check their health to be
safest, but first one question: is this the first
introduction of a kit of the same gender for Ozzy? We
have seen some be more insistent with dominance
establishment when the kit is the same gender.
What you describe is not a situation where blood is being
drawn so I think that it will work out over the long haul,
but I do think that if it continues too long then you should
get vet checks for both of those two to be safest. (The baby
will be having regular health and dental checks anyway while
the kit shots are being given.)
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