Ferrets Jade and Kobi

Yes, I'm 2 years behind with updating my web page... Beginning of August 2005 I took Jade and Kobi in. I took Jade in back in June '99 and she came with a hob kit. My neighbour fell in love with them and adopted them, she gave Jade her name and also named her son Zac. Zac died of a blockage in autumn 2002 and in 2003 she got Kobi who is Wesley's brother but from a second litter. Kobi's litter wasn't handled as much as Wesley's litter by the lady who had the kits so Kobi was a bit more timid from the start. Then my neighbour didn't spend quite enough time handling him so he got even more timid. Then my neighbour left home beginning of 2005 and left the ferrets with her parents who didn't feel confident handling Kobi and didn't really know what to do with them so I took them after visiting them in July and seeing that Jade had become quite frail.

I soon noticed that Jade had symptoms of low blood glucose so I tested her and she did indeed have a low BG so she was put on prednisolone. Around October 2005 she became quite ill and kept bringing her food back up and after having a blood test done, Michaela thought she had hepatitis and was likely to die. But then she got better and after another one or two mild bouts of bringing up her food, she was okay.

And because Kobi spent time with Jake and Phoebe who were not frightened of me and would come to me, he soon copied their behaviour and became tame, too. After a few months he even cuddled with me. When I took Jade and Kobi out at night, I would cuddle them first and he enjoyed that a lot. And when he was out he stopped running away from me and soon even came when I called him. He is extremely intelligent and one of the few ferrets who know their names and actually come when called. :-)

Jade

Jade did quite well for 1 1/2 years. She eventually lost a lot of hair and had a sparse coat so it looked like she had adrenal disease on top of the insulinoma. But the insulinoma never got worse, in the beginning she started out on 1/4 mg of pred twice a day but then she was quite underweight and only 500g. As she put on weight, her pred dose was increased to 1/2 mg twice a day and she never needed more and never showed severe symptoms. She was active until the end and always ran around for about half an hour, exploring the upstairs first and then going downstairs to have a look through the lounge, kitchen and utility before going to her favourite bed in the lounge.

She developed an abscess at the front of her mouth/ on the jaw around November 2006 and I immediately gave her antibiotics. It wasn't a root abscess, it was just sort of at the front of her jaw. It didn't cause her much pain as she still ate well. She had also developed 2 skin tumours, I'm not sure whether they were mast cell tumours or sebaceous epitheliomas. They opened up and bled from time to time and in the end also abscessed. In February 2007 it so happened that she first developed one of her skin tumour abscesses and then the abscess on her jaw happened again. This time it got quite bad within a day so on 14th of February I took her to the vets. Jade still ate in the morning even though the abscess looked quite bad but watching her throughout the day I thought I had better take her to the vets for maybe some stronger antibiotics and painkiller. But Michaela had one look and said some tissue had already become necrotic (and 24 hours before she had *no* abscess) so suggested we let her go this time. I was in shock because I just hadn't expected this, especially since Jade had still eaten. But necrotic tissue sure doesn't sound good and her immune system was obviously in a bad shape so I went along with what Michaela said. She put her to sleep and because it was evening, she didn't have time to do the autopsy... She was also off the next day and from what she said I was afraid that there wouldn't be a vet the next day to do it either- so we did it the same night. I'd already asked the vets for some pots for the lab before Christmas 2006 because I thought what if a ferret dies by itself during the holidays, I wouldn't want to call a vet out to do the autopsy. Of course it would be a different matter if a ferret had to be put to sleep but I thought if one died then I wouldn't want to call a vet out but I would also want an autopsy done so I asked for some pots and a needle and suture material. So we now used it on Jade. Pete cut her open and then I took tissue samples. I didn't do well, didn't find the adrenal glands and I went for the most obvious change in the pancreas but it wasn't insulinomas so I missed those, too (unless the pancreatic hyperplasia can cause low blood sugars and she didn't have insulinoma after all which would explain why she never got worse and her BG was steady around 60 mg/dl). But it was a good learning experience. It looks so easy when Michaela does it but was quite hard to do with just the 2 of us.

So 2 days later I made an appointment with Mr Jones and gave him the pots and I'd also printed the autopsy photos out. He was amazed at the quality and what the pancreas had looked like and found it very interesting.

So this was the end of Jade, and Kobi was now on his own, still having some time out with Jake and Phoebe though. By March I tried to integrate Kobi in with Jake, Phoebe and Ruby but he bullied Ruby. I put Bitter Apple on her and the bullying almost stopped- but then got worse again. All this coincided with me taking in another rescue called Honey, and Spike being taken out of his group and put with Honey so eventually Ruby was put with Spike and Honey and all 3 got on so well so Kobi is now with Jake and Phoebe. All very complicated, sigh... But Kobi is very happy with jake and Phoebe and they are a lovely playful group. :-)

Jake, Kobi and Phoebe