From:
Sukie Crandall
Date: 2009-02-20 17:32:37 UTC
Subject: [ferrethealth] injury prevention: FEATURES of products
To: fhl <ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com>
We received a note from someone that doesn't meet the
"Consumer Reports" rule, and which I think she meant to
send to send to the FML instead of the FHL, anyway,
but when I returned it for rewrite -- because it IS a good
topic that is health related -- her ISP said that she does
not have an address with them, that she does not exist,
or at least that her address doesn't.
So, I am going to introduce the needed topic. NO merchants
or manufacturers will be names to avoid violating the
"Consumer Reports" rule, but the FEATURES of products
which can cause injury and death are the subject.
To get people started:
1. Avoid any vinyl toys. These can cause blockages.
So can soft rubber, while the extremely hard rubber
should only be played with when there is close supervision.
2. If a cage has the outer bars too far apart a ferret or
other animal can get partway out but then have the ribs
or hips get snagged, causing injury or death.
3. Check if doors can be displaced, too. We have a cage
with doors that drop down, but learned that if a ferret
shakes it enough the attachments at the bottom can come
loose on one side, then the ferret can try to squeeze through
the resulting V shape and get the neck caught. It happened
to our Telemna, but I found her soon enough so she is fine.
4. We have had a ferret who snacked in beds acquire a "fur"
ball that mostly was not fur. It was fake sheep fleece. We
have checked and not all fleece products shed much. The
polar fleece we have plucked seems to stay intact, but the
fake sheep fleece comes apart really easily and since it does
not digest it can form obstructions. Since then we have covered
all the fake sheep fleece in products we have that we are using
and will not buy any more products with that in them.
I am sure that others have excellent injury avoidance information.
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
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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