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Post by catznfertz on Jan 4, 2011 20:33:01 GMT -5
Hello All,
I hope you guys can give me some good advice. My ferret, Linus, is 7 years old and has been dealing with adrenal and insulinoma for about the past year. I have him switched to a raw ground diet (not a chunk chewer!) of chicken, pork, turkey, duck and rabbit. He has a deslorelin implant that he got last may, and got most of his fur back. He is currently getting 2.5 mg of pred twice a day and seems to be doing relatively well on it. He gets his meds in a mix turkey baby food thinned out a bit with heavy whipping cream.
The problem I'm concerned with is that his stools are very runny. His main meals of raw meat are ground up with organs and bones and all, so I don't think they are deficient there, but a pretty large part of Linus's diet is turkey baby food and cream. I have been adding a pinch of eggshell powder to this mix, thinking it might help firm up the stools a bit, but it hasn't seemed to help.
I have always heard about pumpkin as being the universal cure for the poopies, but I haven't heard if it is safe to use for a ferret with insulinoma. Another option I have considered is slippery elm bark, but I have the same concern there. Linus is really doing pretty well, all things considered, but I don't really feel like there's much room for error. I hesitate to change anything unless I'm sure it is safe and will work for him.
If anyone has any ideas or suggestions, I would be most appreciative!
Amanda
The thing that co
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Post by mustelidmusk on Jan 4, 2011 21:18:49 GMT -5
There re a number of things you can try - probably the thing tat is least likely to affect blood sugar would be clay. That's actually the effective ingredient in kaopectate. Here's some general info about some different types of clay. one thing you'll want to do is mix the clay in with the soup....let is sit for a while ((5-10 mins.) before serving. stir right before serving. the reason for letting it sit is that clays can swell if they are not fully hydrated when eaten. the risk is very, very smal since these clays come as dry powders, and they mix into liquids really well. There is is red clay that is virtually tasteless - it's mentioned on the site below. www.shirleys-wellness-cafe.com/clay.htm#a
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Post by miamiferret2 on Jan 4, 2011 21:33:09 GMT -5
M lay off the whipping cream. Dairy will give a ferret the runs faster than anything else I know of. My ferret also had alot of diarrhea and he had insulinoma.
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sherik
Going Natural
Posts: 105
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Post by sherik on Jan 4, 2011 21:35:39 GMT -5
I remember when Roo had insulinoma and the runs my vet suggested marshmallow, not marshmallows, but the herb you can get in health food stores.
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Post by miamiferret2 on Jan 4, 2011 21:43:47 GMT -5
Maybe all the meds are throwing off his intestinal flora. Try giving him something with probiotics. It seemed to help my ferret
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Post by mustelidmusk on Jan 4, 2011 22:12:32 GMT -5
my ferrets tolerate heavy cream/heavy whipping cream really well, although I give it a an occasional treat. If you are giving quite a bit of cream, cutting back may help. Probiotics may help as well.
There's also a chance the the adrenal disease is causing the runs, which it seems to do in some ferrets. A lot of baby food will cause the runs as well.
I also understand that insulinomic ferts can be very picky eaters, so I know that the SOME baby food and cream may be somewhat necessary.
If you can let us know what your ferret 's eating habits are - (how much of this, that, and how often - as well as appetite, inappetence, we can probably provide better/more refined suggestions. These thing usually require a slow approach with slow chages so ferrets don't go on feeding strikes when they have health issues.
-jennifer
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Post by Heather on Jan 4, 2011 23:09:22 GMT -5
Just a thought, and I know the furbabies who have had adrenal for a time are horribly picky eaters and you do what you can to get them to eat but I found that as the disease progressed their tolerance for cream became less and less. Eating it resulted in looser and looser stools. I almost lost Nicodemus before realizing that it was the cream that I was feeding him that was causing the looser stools. Pumpkin appears to help (I use it for Calypso, who has insulinoma), but personally if I could get him to eat his food without the creme (at least for awhile to see if it helps, it took about 2 weeks for Nico's gut flora to go back to normal). Your egg shell powder should be about 1/2 tsp per 8 oz of food. Another thing you should probably look at is I've been hearing more and more that for severe cases (more progressed cases) of adrenal that the deslorin only lasts about 6 months. One of my switching students has discovered this and it's consistent with her three. My vet says that according to her studies that the shot should last about 9 months but I'm hearing the 6 months as an actual time line. Just a couple of thoughts ciao
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Post by catznfertz on Jan 5, 2011 11:42:17 GMT -5
The reason I started adding the whipping cream to his baby food is just to get some extra calories into the little guy. He is just skin and bones and pred belly. Plus, he was starting to turn his nose up at the baby food thinned with just water and his meds. He is otherwise eating okay but not really enough to really gain any weight. I feed a chicken mix (leg quarters ground up with the drumstick bone removed, plus 50/50 liver/kidney mix at about 10%) turkey mix (turkey leg meat ground up with the chicken leg bones and organ mix) pork mix (just boneless pork and organ mix) duck mix (whole duck, bones and all, with whatever giblets it comes with, plus organ mix), and rabbit mix (dressed rabbit bones and all, with organ mix). I have been grinding this up with a medium coarse plate and adding 500 mg of taurine powder to their evening meal. This is for 5 ferrets. I feed twice a day, and Linus typically eats at meal times and only rarely snacks in between. I try to make sure there is at least a little something left until the next meal if he wants it. Sometimes, he is less than enthusiastic about eating, and I'll thin his mix out with some water and run it through the blender. He thinks that is pretty cool and will usually eat more if I do this and hold him while he eats. Lately, he seems to be eating pretty well on his own though.
I got him some Nupro to add to his baby food, thinking that might help make up for some of the nutrients he's missing, but he wasn't terribly thrilled with it. I figured I'd rather have him eating SOMETHING rather than NOTHING. So I don't know if he would even eat pumpkin if I offered it to him, ditto for slippery elm bark. If he will eat either, are they both safe for insulinoma kids? I do have some Probios that I use for one of my cats, which seems to be pretty well liked, so I'll start him up on that tonight and see how that goes over.
Any other ideas on how to put some weight on the little dude besides the whipping cream? I have increased duck in their rotation, since it's really fatty, but I can't think of anything else. I will cut back on the cream, and check out the clay stuff too.
thanks for all your help!
Amanda
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Post by Heather on Jan 5, 2011 16:34:17 GMT -5
If you want to increase weight try adding some of the fat that is under the chicken skins, pork fat...I have a tendency to resort to the natural fats rather than using creme or even processed lard. If you trim a steak before cooking, then grind that up and let him eat that. If you're really worried about the pumkin then use the slippery elm. It has no flavour and isn't high on the glycimic charts. Like I said Calypso doesn't seem to have problems with the pumpkin but it is sweeter...and has more natural sugars, so I can understand your concern. ciao
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Post by mustelidmusk on Jan 5, 2011 17:44:37 GMT -5
You may want to add a raw egg yolk to twice a week to the mix that gets thinned out. (If Linus is the only one getting egg yolk, you may want to stick to 1 yolk per week, and an entire youlk in soup may be a bit much (may give him the runs). Try this instead of cream. or use a little cream with it an them back out the cream.
This may not apply since you make your own grind,....but.... Chicken/poultry fat is much more nutritious for ferts than beef/lamb/pork fat (more nutrients) so if there seems to be excess fat from chicken on one day, save the excess fat and put it in a "leaner meal". I trim all my meats for peopel meals and sabeve the fatty scaps for th brats. I start up a freezer bag of scraps and use them to add more fat.
goats milk/cream may help and may be more digestible. You can even try this in powdered form. I have made frozen goat's milk ice cubes.
slippery elm bark - uness you know uyour fert has inflamed intestines, I would avoid using the slippery elm. the reason for this is that the elm bark syrup coats the intestinal system from one end to the other. ANything that coats will inhibit nutrient absorption. (Carafate is a little different in that is sticks to ulcers (like a bandaid/scab rather than coating everything - but carafate works on ulcers)
I gotta run but will be back with more info. later. -jennifer
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Post by sherrylynne on Jan 5, 2011 22:32:23 GMT -5
In this case, I'm wondering how KMR would work? Tons of nutrients, little to no lactose, and a good bit of fat in it?
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Post by miamiferret2 on Jan 5, 2011 23:16:56 GMT -5
I really think if you lay off the cream you may note an improvement with the stool. the skin and bones look is also from pred. it causes muscle wasting just as bad as adrenal disease. my ferret had insulinoma and adrenal and he had runny stools also. I found that giving him kefir yogurt drink .5 ml twice a day helped tremendously. a lot of of good probiotics in it. I don't like activia as much but try that or a good Greek yogurt if you can't find the kefir yogurt smoothie. try to find sugar free if course... I also put the Pet Inoculant from Wysong in his soupies twice a day. lots of good probiotics in there too. All of these things helped his stomach tremendously and his poops looked normal again. also, be sure never to give pred on an empty stomach. it will wreck his stomach.
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Post by mustelidmusk on Jan 6, 2011 2:03:16 GMT -5
KMR (Kitten Milk Replacer) works well on ferrets (If anyone remembers Apple and Kiwi, you may recall that KMR helped Apple gain weight with his IBD) Oxbow Carnivore Care is also excellent.
About pumpkin...I get concerned about using pumpkin with insulinomic ferrets because it does have a relatively high glycemic index (meaning it puts sugar into the blood stream quickly) in spite of the fact that the overall glycemic load is low. When sugar spikes in the blood stream, insulin is produced. Insulin shoves sugar into storage (mostly in the liver). This type of activity can result in an insulinomic crash.
The problem with ferrets is that they have much faster metabolisms than people. Everything happens on them at an elevated pace. we don't really understand how fast the sugar gets into the ferret blood stream, and we do not know and how fast the insulin can respond to the presence of this spike. So the Glycemic Index/load model may not apply to ferrets in a meaningful way, especially since their digestive systems are so fast. Sugar in the blood is not an indicator of how high an insulin spike may be and how quickly the insulin can push the sugar into storage (where its inaccessible until it it is processed and put back into the blood stream when needed)
The reason why insulinomic crashes happen in ferrets is because too much insulin is generated by the pancreas. If the pancreas is over-producing insulin to begin with due to a diseased pancreas, then a sugar spike might really stimulate the pancreas to overproduce. The bottom line is that we really don't know how pumkin may act in insulinomic ferrets. all we do know is that the type of "carb" that is in pumpkin will turn into sugar in the blood stream quickly. For these reasons, I feel it's safest for insulinomic ferrets to avoid pumpkin.
-jennifer
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Post by catznfertz on Jan 6, 2011 13:36:26 GMT -5
I appreciate everyone's suggestions, but I guess it was too late for poor Linus after all. He ate his breakfast yesterday morning and took his medicine like a champion, and seemed to be doing just fine, but when I got home yesterday evening he was glassy eyed and staggering. I have seen this a few times, but I was always able to get him to eat something to get the blood sugar back up, but this time that was not the case.
He refused everything I could think of to offer him, and wouldn't even lick the Ferretone bottle. I put some honey on his gums, thinking that would perk him up enough to feel like eating, but it just wasn't happening. Rather than letting him go through the inevitable crash and possible seizures, we went to the vet for our final visit. He came home to spend one last night with his buddies and will be buried in our yard this afternoon.
I'm heartbroken, but I think he just decided it was time for him to go.
Thanks again for all your help, I have learned a lot here.
Amanda
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Post by sherrylynne on Jan 6, 2011 20:07:22 GMT -5
Oh, Amanda! I am so sorry Insulinoma is just such a nasty disease.
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