From:
"Sukie Crandall"
Date: 2008-04-26 12:27:47 UTC
Subject: [ferrethealth] Re: ferret info you need to know
To: ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com
Oh, I think it is pretty impossible to be smarter about ferret health
than a vet who actually knows ferrets -- at least I don't know or
know of any non-vets who are (including Steve and me), though I
have known a few individuals who insisted that they were. ;-)
(Not Debbie and hopefully that made a number of people here laugh)
I LOVE your points about asking questions and learning on one's own!
Anyway, many things are like with people. To quote a friend, Monroe C.:
"Everything over 35 is maintenance." Ferret adult ages are kind of similar
(very roughly) to times 10 or 12 for human ages, so when they are 3 they
begin having more problems just as humans do in what a physician patiently
explained to me really WAS the start of "middle age". As with humans (x10)
for ones who aren't carrying an extra burden about 5 or 6 begins to
be early old (Ouch!) or later middle age depending on the individual.
Now, it is entirely possible to have individuals for whom older age problems
happen earlier than for others. Many things fit into that: nutrition, level of
exercise, genetic burdens, conditions during the pregnancy, past illnesses,
current medical conditions, cleanliness, etc. If a person just looks at human
medical history we owe a large amount of increased longevity to: better
medical care, vaccines and other disease avoidance, antibiotics, ability to
safely do surgery, improved safety of home cleanliness and improved food
safety, etc. In fact some health historians credit the largest portion of increase
in human longevity since 150 years ago (when the mid 30s and the 40s were
too often the limit of life to the advent of women's magazines which are credited
with the starts of the cleanliness and food safety campaigns (though the later
was greatly helped by a novel that got across some food conditions because it was
so closely based on real things -- was it Upton Sinclair(?) -- ah, yes, _The Jungle_
which should be out of copyright and available to read for free on-line as a
result. Life spans for humans are far, far longer now than they were for our
more "natural" historical past (or for current humans who live far more in past
ways whether in the jungle or elsewhere -- though the U.S. is far from having the
most universal or available health care or the longest longevity in the world, and
we don't help with too little exercise and many of us -- including me -- eating
too much. THOSE BASIC PRINCIPALS ALSO APPLY TO FERRET HEALTH but they
have the added complication that people breed all too often for certain looks
without taking into account that some of those come with added health burdens.)
(That is not to detract from the work of people like George C. Williams and
Randolph Nesse who originally pointed out that it is foolish to forget the
genetic history of a species when designing health care. It's just saying that
we do a good job of getting much, much better quality of life and quantity of
life when careful care is used to avoid problems that can be avoided and delay
others. So, a rescue ferret may have had a rough past that reduced health
for later years, too. It doesn't stop the ferret from being wonderful but we like
to provide extra vet care for the rescue ferrets we adopt just to be safe.)
Anyway, I am exhausted so I hope I said that clearly enough. If I didn't then
I figure people here are smart enough to think about it and figure it out...
(Allow for typos, too, please, because they really increase for me and are
much harder for me to spot when I have to go through a short bout of
sleep deprivation.)
One of your excellent points that i LOVE (and I love a number of them!)
is avoiding E. coli. There is excellent
work out there that even a defeated E. coli infection can cause kidney damage
in a ferret. Leads to some of the journal articles are in the FHL Archives for
those who want to learn more:
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
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