Nov 10 2008
The basics of nursing care for a sick or post-op ferret
The basics of caring for a sick or post-op ferret include:
- Hydration
- Food
- Medication
- Temperature regulation
Hydration
It’s important to know that a dehydrated ferret won’t eat or drink. It’s also important to know that dehydration seriously damages the kidneys and can lead to death in a very short period of time. If your ferret is sick (especially if it has the runs), is elderly or post-op, you need to pay attention to the input and output of fluids.
How do you tell if they’re dehydrated?
You do the “pinch” test. You pinch the skin on the back or belly and the skin doesn’t go down right away, then your ferret is dehydrated. The longer the skin stays up, the more dehydrated the ferret is.
Once a ferret has reached a certain level of dehydration (dry gums, dull eyes, no or little urine production) that ferret needs to be seen by the vet asap. If it’s only slightly dehydrated, you might be able to re-hydrate them by forcing liquids.
This can be done either directly (slowly feeding your ferret water through a feeding syringe) or indirectly (by adding it to the ferret’s food). Most people who have taken care of a sick ferret know about “duck soup.” It’s basically either the ferret’s own food crushed up and made soupy with water, Pedialyte, or low-salt chicken broth, or, some other formulation (chicken or turkey babyfood, canned A/D from the vet’s office, or homemade animal versions of chicken babyfood) and one of those liquids.
There are many, many recipes for duck soup and variations on it. We’ll talk more about that later.
The ferret needs at least 60cc (1 cc=1mL) of fluids a day. If it’s dehydrated, double that would be good.
You can also look at the color of the urine. The darker it is, the more dehydrated the ferret is. Urine should be yellow but not very dark or have any kind of brown or orange color. Odd-colored urine is a reason for a quick trip to the vet’s office.
It’s good to familiarize yourself with what the skin does when pinched and what color urine is supposed to be before your ferret gets sick. Then you’ll have something to compare it to.
Tomorrow: Food
