Great new 'ferret food'!!!

I normally don't do endorsements on my website, but I was recently at a pet food store searching for a high quality ferret or cat kibble, and I stumbled onto an amazing find.

Now I'm sure that many of you in the ferret world are already aware of this food, but for those that aren't, check it out! Orijin cat food can be checked out online at http://www.orijen.ca/orijen/about/ or at Total Pet, Quackers Canine Cuisine (they may only carry dog food) or Ospika pet and farm in Prince George.

This food is rather reasonably priced - less expensive than Totally Ferret, with a higher protein content... it is nothing short of impressive. The protein content of Orijin cat food hovers around a whopping 45%, with 20% fat, and .25% taurine (Totally ferret has roughly the same amount of fat and taurine, but only 36% protein) - full analysis of the food can be found at http://www.orijen.ca/orijen/products/CatAnalysis.aspx. The first three ingredients of this food are: chicken, chicken meal, turkey meal, making it a nice, meaty alternative to many other ferret and cat foods on the market.

Ouch! Cuts, scratches and puncture wounds

Let’s face it, ferrets LOVE to bug. They enjoy harassing cats, dogs and even other ferrets, playfully dodging any retaliatory strikes put forward by the aggravated animal. I will stop at this point and make one things perfectly clear: I do not condone allowing your ferret to play unsupervised with other animals or even unfamiliar ferrets.

Sometimes no matter how careful you are, bad things things happen.

So what do you do if your ferret gets a cut, scratch or puncture wound? First, I would suggest assessing the situation. Is the ferret badly hurt? If so, then an emergency trip to the vet is in order. Or is it just a scratch or shallow cut? If the ferret only has a small scratch, then an emergency trip to the vet is not necessary. I would suggest thoroughly washing the injured area with a strong soap such as a hibitane solution and keeping an eye on the wound over the next few days for signs of infection. If the injury was made by another ferret, a small amount of inflammation is possible in some cases; if the inflammation around the wound does not subside after a few hours, take the animal to the vet - it is better to be safe than sorry. Puncture wounds are particularly nasty creatures - they are difficult to spot and can be a source of infection. Sometimes, bacteria or foreign matter can get forced under the skin by a puncture, causing the injury to become infected or abscess.

Abscesses are not nice; they require regular cleaning and medication to help kill the bacteria inside the wound and force the infection causing matter out of the body. Abscess are also tough to treat, especially on a ferret. If the abscess is large, the vet may flush the wound, then lance (partially stitch) it and insert a drain to keep the wound clear of pus while healing. If the wound is not quite bad enough to be lanced and inserting a drain is not required or recommended, then it is up to the owner to keep the wound clean, as pus free as possible, and open. Keeping an abscess clean on a ferret is not easy - because of their low profile and ability to squeeze into small spaces, ferrets are DUST MAGNETS, and therefore their abscess must be cleaned AT LEAST twice a day. Abscesses are cleaned using a warm cloth. Often, the heat of the cloth will draw the pus out of the wound; if the infection is severe or the abscess has been neglected, the pus may have to be gently squeezed out of the wound; this should be done until no more pus comes out.

It is very important to remove scabs when cleaning as abscesses need to heal from the inside out. Allowing the outer layer of skin to heal over such a deep and bacteria laden wound will likely cause the abscess to reoccur.

Once the pus is out of the abscess, you may want to consider cleaning the area with a hibitane solution to prevent bacteria on the skin surrounding the wound from entering it, and perhaps applying a topical anti-bacterial agent such as polysporin**. Your vet will be able to tell you which products you should use to keep the wound clean while it is healing. If you notice that your ferret has an abscess, you should bring your ferret to the vet immediately: neglecting an abscess it never a good idea. A neglected abscess can cause your ferret a great deal of pain and discomfort. Swelling around the abscess leading to hair loss and thin skin on the affected area is possible in extreme cases, as is the infection entering the blood stream, leading to the death of the animal. Abscesses, if neglected, may become so infected that the infection spreads to other wounds, causing an entire area to become a giant pus pocket.

If you do everything right and the abscess returns, don’t give up! Sometimes the bacteria that has embedded itself in the wound is antibiotic resistant. If this is the care and the abscess returns as pussy as ever once the antibiotics run out, have the vet do a sensitivity culture - this can help determine which bacteria has entered the abscess and which antibiotics can get rid of the infection.

This ferret had been attacked by something. The wounds had not been properly or regularly cleaned and the ferret had not been treated; the animal had not been kept in clean conditions and was on no medication to help fight the bacterial invasion. The result: severe infection. Gently pressing on any single part of the neck (or on the pus-filled swelling located on the side of his neck) would cause pus to ooze out of all of the wounds. We counted approximately 7 abscesses total; it is likely that the infection began in one wound and spread. Due to infected abscesses, the ferret was almost completely bald around his neck and his skin was alarmingly thin. Allowing these wounds to get so infected would perhaps have been a bit more excusable if the infection was antibiotic resistant, or even potentially if treating it was extremely expensive; this was not the case. The abscesses were responsive to antibiotics, not too costly, and, after weeks of careful and thorough cleaning (which would not have been very time consuming had the infection not been allowed to spread), hair grew back, the skin began to thicken and the abscesses healed.

** when using a product such as Polysporin, make sure that the animal does NOT lick off the product as it may contain ingredients that are toxic when ingested. I suggest keeping the ferret separate from other animals and keeping it occupied until the Polysporin has 'soaked in' to the skin. Long term use is also not recommended due to possible negative effects on the kidneys.

Ferret Pr(oops)ing --- A Near Tragic Tale

As mentioned in my previous blogs, the task of ferret proofing is NEVER done, and sometimes after months of showing no interest in a particular object or space, your ferret will take an interest in that object or space, when this happens, its best to act immediately to ensure that you ferrets safety, not doing so could have tragic results. As a friend of mine likes to say “ferrets are nothing more than suicide machines with fur, its a wonder we let ourselves get so attached to them”; nothing could be more accurate.

One of our ferrets recently ‘discovered’ a hole in the wall behind a fake cupboard door. Though he had seen this hole before, he had previously shown no interest in it... one day we noticed that he kept going back to that hole again and again. Not wanting to hammer boards into the wall of our rental home, we attempted to block off the cupboard with duct tape and cardboard. We later learned that this ferret had figured out how to remove duct tape.

One morning we went outside to eat breakfast in the sun. We were outside for less than 15 minutes and when we returned the cupboard was open - the ferret had gone into the hole. We squeaked his toy and heard him shuffling around in the hole, but he didn’t come out. Now, this ferret DOES come to a squeaky toy, but only if nothing more exciting is going on; we decided to continue on with our day and leave treats to tempt him out. When we returned that evening he had still not emerged. Something was wrong. We headed into the laundry room immediately below our suite to see if we could tell where he was. After about a half hour of searching, we found some fur popping out from around a large cast iron pipe. We removed some of the insulation and found his head - it was at this point that we realized that he was stuck. We borrowed some tools and attempted to cut an area large enough for him to exit; it was then that we discovered just HOW stuck he was. Somehow, this little guy had gotten his head pinned - he could breathe but he could not move. Unable to do anything more for him that night, we fed him some water and ferretvite and went to bed. We got up early the next morning and drove to the hardware store to rent some more appropriate tools. About an hour later, the ferret was still stuck and we came to the conclusion that if we wanted to get this little guy out we needed to get professional help, so we hired a carpenter. After four hours of drilling and cutting we exposed the ferret’s head and body; eventually we were able to free his head and, with the help of a vegetable oil drenching he was able to wiggle free. He emerged from his 27 hour imprisonment oily, hungry and dehydrated but other than few minor cuts and scratches on his body, he was unhurt. This ferret was extremely lucky. Not only did we know that he had gotten into our wall, we were also able to figure out where exactly he was stuck, enabling us to use the power tools necessary to saw through decades of poorly done renovations. He was also lucky because we were able to free his head, and it is doubtful that he realizes just how close he was to not being able to be taken out alive.
The outcome: the ferret has recovered and is as mischievous as ever, we now have some large holes in the drywall and a nice repair bill. The worst part is that this whole thing was avoidable. Had we simply asked about boarding over the hole in the first place and done so as soon as the ferret had shown an interest in the hole this terrible ordeal could have been avoided.

The bottom line: A fool may not learn from his own mistakes, but only a complete idiot doesn’t learn from the mistakes of others. Don’t let something avoidable like this happen to you - remember to act immediately when your ferret shows you something new that needs to be ferret proofed. We were lucky, you may not be. And YES, IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU.