From:
Sukie Crandall
Date: 2011-09-14 23:31:06 UTC
Subject: Re: [ferrethealth] Dental clean for ferrets
To: ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com
Well, keeping it on health rather than food preferences as per FHL rules I won't say which of the kibbles we use, but we have had ferrets for 30 years with kibbles the usual primary foods and almost none have needed dental care.
What we have noticed is that as long as some kind of form of cleaning is available almost none get caries or tarter, and you will have seen the studies that show that almost no ferrets get periodontal disease (though there are exceptions and those tend to be related to general health challenges).
In our case we have a preference for having Foamy Fries or Cheweasels handy as the primary way to keeping down build-up though we do have enzymatic toothpaste and cheesecloth (to wrap around pinkies) for the few who need more, and we do inspect to check.
What we've found in our three decades with ferrets in the family is that some rare individuals are prone to dental problems. That's like humans, isn't it? Even with care some individuals just don't have thick enamel, or have brittle teeth, or perhaps have a worse representation of oral bacteria than others, or maybe don't salivate as well, or have poor habits (like biting cages or biting sisters), orÂ…
So -- and remember that we have never stinted on veterinary care -- we have found just a few with dental problems with our approach.
That means that no matter what the diet is, those people who have only had a few ferrets simply don't have a reasonable enough sample to draw conclusions because the problems are rare enough with decent home care, anyway.
The one we had in 30 years who had periodontal disease was one of the ones we took in back when we used to be able to afford the time and money to have ones with genetic malformations join our family (some of whom cost in the 5 figures for veterinary care during their lifetimes). She was loaded with mutations and more than a few experts on several aspects of her problems referred to her as "borderline survivable" but we managed to get her 6 decent years with a heck of a lot of work by everyone. Besides her deformations and her severe intellectual impairments (not even coping with ferret body language), she also had arthritis, achondroplastic dwarfism, and asthma, and of course she could never walk or hold her back quite right. When she died Dr. Bruce Williams received her full cadaver and kept many of her soft tissues, finding that she was dealing simultaneously at the time of her death with something like 8 serious medical conditions, 5 of which were always terminal ones. Her skeleton went to Bob Church who used it as his example of borderline survivable skeletal form for ferrets. Ruffle had to be on a thick liquid diet for her final half year which is why she got periodontal disease, too. That was unavoidable because she got to the point where her esophagus was compressed near the bottom due to a heart tumor in addition to cardiomyopathy (both of which preceded the oral problems). Oh, and how she wound up named "Ruffle": as a kit many letter sounds would infuriate or frighten her, so we literally went through all of the sounds with her till we found which had the best acceptance. They were R, F, and L. Then we put together a number of name options with those sounds and Ruffle was the best of the bunch in how she behaved toward the words.
So, again, it is impossible generalize from a small sample. In 30 years with ferrets in the family we have had very few who wound up needing dental care, and except for one who needed molars that were erupting through his palate removed (but never needed any additional dental care) we found that the ones who needed dental care tended to later need more dental care again later. As long as reasonable at home management happens in one way or another to rub away deposits, most do fine, but some individuals just seem to be personally more vulnerable on that score. We personally like Foamy Fries and Cheweasels supplemented with veterinary enzymatic toothpaste used with cheesecloth over a pinkie for those who need more than those two tasty chewing things, but others will use other approaches with just as much success.
Every food choice has it's own good points AND its own downsides. None are perfect and a treating vet should always know what is fed, since that helps jump fast enough with the problems of anyone's preferred approaches.
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/
http://www.ferrethealth.msu.edu/
http://www.ferretcongress.org/
http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml
http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html
all ferret topics:
http://listserv.ferretmailinglist.org/archives/ferret-search.html
"All hail the procrastinators for they shall rule the world tomorrow."
(2010, Steve Crandall)
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