Neglected Ferret

Well I am considering rescuing a ferret. There is one in a local animal shelter and I went to visit him today and I am a little concerned about his health. He came to them in the beginning of the summer and was an abuse case. He came in with his cage mate who died during a surgery to help save her life. He had a tumor removed from his head and that has healed fine.

The concerns I have are these. He is balding on his back between his shoulder blades and in that region along with his tail. I can see his skin on his shoulders and his fur seemed pretty rough and dry. He is also severly underweight. I can feel about every bone in his body. And his cagemate is overweight. Could this be a dominance issue? Could the one not be eating because he is too submissive? His nails are also very long and desperately need to be trimmed. They also just treated him for fleas with proline, im thinking it was the product for dogs.

Could all of this be due to stress, malnutrition and unclean living environments? Or do you think there is an underlying issue?

Here is a link to his petfinder.com page.

http://www.petfinder.com/petdetail/16277651

He might have lymphoma. This is unfortunately very common in ferrets with poor diets.

I would ask a private vet, or on a ferret forum, about these symptoms.

Let me just say, I've had ferrets in the past and when you want to trim their nails they will fight it... But if you hold them on their backs by the scruff of the neck they will fall asleep and will allow you to do anything you want to them. So the fact that the shelter hasn't done this suggests to me that they aren't doing quite as much as they could be doing, since it's pretty painful for them to walk with super long nails.


If you do decide to get him give him some medicated baths to soothe the dry skin. They do start to lose fur with old age though, so that could be it.

I'll PM you the email of a woman who runs a ferret rescue. When we found our ferret, Jack, in our backyard, he was in a lot of trouble, and she helped us out.

I agree about asking a vet. The weight issue could be health related, neglect related or they could be two different type of ferrets. I have two ferrets. Lola is a Real Canadian ferret and is huge and fat, no matter the amount of food she gets. Cha Cha is a Marshall's ferret and is thin and petite and pretty bony.

Get them on a mixture of high protein cat food of ferret food, but most ferret food sold at stores is pretty crummy. I feed high protein cat food and my ferrets look and feel amazing.

Balding pattern sounds like adrenal cancer, would explain weight loss as well. Does he seem active otherwise? Do they know how old he is? It could be from stress as well but given how common cancer is in ferrets I would be concerned.

Yeah I agree with adrenal disease and unfortunately that can get rather expensive but if your up to it and can afford the special meds and what not go for it.