From:
Sukie Crandall
Date: 2007-12-29 23:13:00 UTC
Subject: [ferrethealth] Re: Totally Ferret Hypoallergenic food & EGE
To: ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com
Often things are not as dramatic as we humans would like them to be.
Alchemy's hope for a Philosopher's Stone set aside, there has been
some lead changed to gold by actual modern day scientists but the cost
of doing so was astronomically expensive compared to starting with
gold. There is no Easy Button or Philosopher's Stone. Alchemists also
then hoped for a panacea which would cure all, and so do many people
today, but it just isn't going to be. Medicine by hope, debate,
insult, or politics got much of Europe stuck for centuries with
Galen's pushing of the concept of the Four Humors. He never proved
that there were Four Humors, you see; he just convinced enough people
in power that those purporting other concepts were fools and that four
was aesthically pleasing because there were four main directions
(N,E,S, and W) and there were thought to be four "elements" (air,
fire, earth, and water). These days folks like us here know better,
including knowing now that "black bile" is digested blood from
ulcerations -- a common consideration with ferrets. So much for
medicine without study...
I guess the balancing factor is that a number of things also don't
turn out to be the worries that were feared.
So, too, with food. Both hopes and worries about many balanced diets
of a range of types have proven unfounded. Kibble does not appear to
cause significantly more gum disease and nor does a raw diet appear to
cause significantly less when each is actually looked at closely with
the physiology, pathology, and anatomy of comparative populations
taken into account. On the other hand, the rate of serious illnesses
from raw animal based foods is lower in ferrets than feared.
So while there is still more to be learned people need to be a bit
careful about the DEGREE of their hopes and of their worries. Time
reveals all...
Now, there *IS* a structural reason -- not just behavioral ones -- why
some ferrets who have been on kibble diets which need crushing don't
shift to meat diets with large pieces. If you look at the premolars
and molars of a ferret (Going from the midline backward in each
quarter of a ferret mouth are incisors, a canine, premolars (in human
dentistry called bicuspids because they are have two high cusps in us)
and then molars. Notice that unlike our teeth, the ferret teeth are
made for slicing. Put meat between the sharp edges you will find on
some of those teeth in young adult ferrets slices easily, BUT a ferret
who has eaten kibble for a good length of time has those slicing edges
blunted, so meat is simply hard to chew. That is one possible
structural reason why we all often read that it is hard to convert
those ferrets to a meat diet; they need to slice, but they no longer
can (though careful cutting by the humans may help -- maybe a feathery
cross-grain cut with thin pieces that need to be separated (?) --
releasing taste when the eased chewing is done, i.e. a good cleaver
may be handy tool...).
Sukie (not a vet)
Recommended ferret health links:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html
http://www.miamiferret.org/fhc/
http://www.ferretcongress.org/
http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml
http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html
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