Hey,

My fiancée and I have had two male ferrets that came from the same bunch, perhaps even the same litter, for about 4 years now. They are both Marshall ferrets and were born around Nov 7th, 2004. Our two ferrets are Mousey and Snowball. Both have had relatively good health so far. Last fall Mousey needed to get his left adrenal gland removed, and has been doing well since with some sling symptoms returning recently. However the main reason for this post is Snowball, he is not doing well at the moment and I would like to hear some input from other who might have been in the same situation. A quick background of Snowball’s problem: One time when cleaning the cage about a month ago where they are kept together, we thought we saw a small bit of what looked like blood in one of the stools, so we separated them and watched them closely but noticed no further problems. Then a few weeks ago we noticed Snowball seemed to be having loose but not liquid stool, we didn’t really think much of it. Things again seemed to return to normal. Then on last Wed night Snowball must have thrown up a few times, but it was not the normal colored tan vomit as we have seen in the past with our ferrets, it was very dark, almost black and seemed to be quite thick. Also it seemed that he had lost some weight over the last week or two at an abnormal rate. This concerned us greatly so we made an appointment for the vet. As a side note, this last winter, Snowball never really put on the wait like Mousey did for the winter or really get a thicker winter coat, we thought this had more to do with Mousey’s recent surgery and that he was one that was more abnormal. The next day when cleaning his cage he went to the bathroom in the little portable cage and his stool was almost completely liquid and berry red in color, he had no colored treats or anything recently so I am assuming that it was a fair bit of blood. Aside from these symptoms, his behavior has remained completely normal.

We went for the appointment at the vet the next day. Immediately the vet saw that he looked jaundiced, Snowball has a Champagne coat and we have incandescent lighting so I really never noticed what the vet showed me as far as his mucous membranes being more yellow than pink, it was quite apparent in the fluorescent lighting. The vet immediately suspected that there are likely problems with the liver and that the yellow color is from a build up of bilirubins in the blood which gives the yellow appearance. Also upon palpating the liver he felt a small mass in or near the liver, though he did not say that it was enlarged or anything like that. It was decided to check Snowball in for the night and run a complete blood workup and xrays. The results the next day were not great unfortunately. They are attached, but the main areas of concern were the ALT (alanine aminotransferase) which was greater than the machine could read, so above 2000, when the normal range is 82-289. Also the TBIL (Total Bilirubins) was at 3.9 with the normal values being 0.0-0.8. At this point the Vet suggested keeping him on fluids over the weekend to see if things might improve on their own, and also put Snowball on antibiotics as a precautionary measure. He felt that the best course of action would be to do an ultrasound guided liver biopsy to see if the problem with the liver could be cancer. He also mentioned another possible problem could be a clogging of the bile duct. I have spent quite a few hours searching the net looking for info on ferret liver problems, but have not found much information at all. Clearly the biopsy will give a more definitive answer as to the problem but I was hoping that someone might be able to interpret the bloodwork more to get some more information out of it. I was wondering if any of you might have had similar problems with your ferrets, and might be able to shed some light on the situation as to some possible causes and treatments. Any information would be much appreciated.

Here are the lab results:



In text format:
"*" Indicates an abnormality

Comprehensive Diagnostic
ALB 2.4 2.3-4.8 G/DL
ALP 534 31-888 U/L
*ALT >2000 82-289 U/L
AMY 12 8-93 U/L
*TBIL 3.9 0.0-0.8 MG/DL
BUN 28 12-43 MG/DL
*CA 7.7 8.6-10.5 MG/DL
PHOS 4.7 3.0-13.8 MG/DL
CRE 0.8 0.3-1.5 MG/DL
GLU 82 59-214 MG/DL
NA 141 140-159 MMOL/L
K 4.3 4.1-6.0 MMOL/L
*TP 3.9 4.6-8.1 G/DL
GLOB 1.5 1.3-4.1 G/DL

WBC 2.62 2-10
*LYM 0.14 0.4-6.5
MON 0.34 0.1-0.7
NEU 2.15 0.8-4.5
*LY% 5.2 27-80
*MO% 12.8 0-10
*NE% 82.0 16-70
*RBC 3.87 7.8-13
*HGB 62 124-187
*HCT 18.63 36-56
*MCV 48 40-48
MCH 16.1 13.5-16.5
MCHC 335 321-355
RDWc 19.4
PLT 382 96-776
PCT 0.31
MPV 8.2
PDWc 36.6


And a few links about ferret blood work that I found:
http://www.ferretcentral.org/faq/part5.html
http://www.barkandwag.com/Ferrets.htm
http://miamiferret.org/physiology.htm
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/pets/ferret-faq/part5/section-16.html


Again any insight would be welcomed,

Thanks,
UTCouple

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