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Post by dreamsome on Jan 25, 2011 10:28:43 GMT -5
i know i've seen threads on here pertaining to this, but cannot for the life of me find them! london has never been able to yawn nearly as "wide" as my other ferret- when i first got him, he was eating kibble but never really chewed it. he would just swallow it, really. it always has seemed a little difficult for him to eat, even now that he's on raw. because his mouth doesn't open very wide he never really bites during play, only nibbles (which can be very nice, actually!) :Di don't think he's experiencing any pain but wondered if any of you have dealt with a "small jawed" ferret before?
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Post by ferretdroogies on Jan 25, 2011 18:28:08 GMT -5
Is London a blaze or panda?
Sari (my smallest ferret) is a blaze, which have a tendency to have problems opening their jaws as wide due to their skulls being flatter than other ferrets. It's associated with waardenburg syndrome which shows up in blaze and panda ferrets (any ferret with a white mark on the head or full white head) genetically due to inbreeding. They also have a 75% of being deaf, and random other symptoms (Sari also has two different colored eyes which can be associated with it as well).
Sari leaves lots of crumbs when she eats and is a noisy eater, probably due to the jaw not opening as wide. She also chokes on her food from time to time since she can't chew as well :3
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Post by rarnold18 on Jan 25, 2011 18:51:28 GMT -5
Heather has a boy with skull deformities, I'm sure that she can help you out with this....
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Post by Heather on Jan 25, 2011 22:21:25 GMT -5
Yes, Boris has a skull deformity. Is your little one a marshals? I"m only curious because I"ve been hearing more and more of these particular issues with their babies. I've seen it so extreme that the one little boy can only eat smashed up kibbles because the kibbles are too large to fit in his mouth (he would do better or a raw mush, I did convince his ferrant to feed him a power soupy but wasn't able to convince her about the raw). He's tiny, as small as some of the smaller females. Boris isn't very large either, he has full range jaw motion but....his bottom jaw juts forward not aligning properly with his top jaw. This means that eventually, he will probably not be able to eat whole meats as arthritis will probably set into his jaw. Your little one may do much better on commercial grinds or small chunks of meat. He will do much better on this than on kibble which he hasn't the strength to crack up and chew (not that ferrets actually chew ) ciao
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Post by dreamsome on Jan 26, 2011 0:19:55 GMT -5
waardenburg syndrome, that's the term i remember seeing on here, thank you! he is from marshalls and is a...panda i believe? his head is all white except for some splotches near his ears. he's also deaf and like sari, is a messy, loud eater! he chokes on occasion, too. the only time he has kibble is when he steals it from his sister... otherwise he's fed ground and small-chunked meats. heather, are you going to start giving boris soups if it ever comes to that? he does fine with his meat now, i just wasn't sure if it was ever causing him pain or if there were issues that could arise in the future. he's a happy, jumpy ferret otherwise and is just finally starting to learn that when the lights are out, that means the humans are sleeping and there's no way he's coming out! (this is a milestone, really). what's sad is that we do the best we can for our babies and want them to be as healthy as they can be- but because of where the majority of them come from, there's no guarantees. this is london, being cute and curious! Attachments:
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Post by Heather on Jan 26, 2011 1:00:15 GMT -5
He's cute. Boris already eats a soft ground mix that is the kitties food. He won't even realize that he's stopped eating whole meats I had spoken about this issue extensively with my mentor. She states that she believes that these deformities that we're seeing in the marshals ferts lies in a couple of issues. She thinks it probably started out as a nutritional deficiency....in the pregnant jill (they create even more issues when breed jills back to back on artificial seasons). She maintains that they saw these deformities in ferrets many years ago when breeders for a number of reasons fed a milk and bread diet to their hunting fuzzes. Mineral deficiencies eventually disrupt genetics. It's complicated and she understood it much better than I did but it does make total sense. So, now even if they were to fix their nutritional problems and stop breeding their jills into the ground (which they won't) they've started a whole horrible scene of genetic mutations and problems. Waardenburgs is just a corner....they're breeding waardenburg ferrets to waardenburg ferrets to continue the colours that everyone wants couple this with their breeding practices we have fuzzes who aren't seeing their 5th birthday, who are not able to open or close their mouths, who's skulls are so deformed that jaws don't fit, teeth don't line up. They won't stop....why? because financially it's worth it's weight in gold. Long lived ferrets isn't what they're about. You don't sell animals in a commercial environment to create longevity....you want to sell more. So you produce a product that wears out faster, making people who really love these little creatures buy more. You create a docile creature so that pet stores can sell your product easier. All the problems that we see is all about the bottom line ciao
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Post by ferretdroogies on Jan 26, 2011 16:53:43 GMT -5
He is adorable He is definitely a panda. :3 Sari has horrible teeth, too. Her incisors are crooked and still look like baby teeth... they are small and overlapping each other. She also, at some point, got a chip on the inner-top portion of one of her upper canines Like Heather said... they are never going to stop breeding for profit, rather than health and longevity, because they make more money that way... and it's sadly at the expense of our little ones
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