Are you ready for this one?  I had a sad weekend of searching for our 8
year old's beloved baby ferret (about 12 weeks old).  He combed the house,
the neighborhood, etc, to no avail.  The older ferret was frantically
looking for him too.  Nearly a week after he'd been missing, we found him
horribly dehydrated, soaked in urine and feces, febrile, dry-nosed and
mouth, on the brink of death literally.  I whipped out this 9 year old
bottle of Pedialyte that I had before I knew that I would just bf through
our own GI crises and fed it to him in his water bottle.  That helped some
and we bathed him.  But what really perked him up was human breast milk (to
the rescue, again!).  I manually pumped a bit and gave him a few teaspoons,
which he devoured.  I then decided to use that frozen stash (still unused
even after my surgery).  Throughout the night, the baby chose the brst milk
over water, mashed ferret food, pedialyte, or strained baby meat.  By this
morning, he was almost good as new (still very skinny though).  When we
consulted the vet, he said "that ferret should be dead from dehydration?
How did you save him?"  He then asked if I was available for referrals!  I
do realize that mother ferret milk would have been better, but alas, there
are no local breeders.
Chris

 Chris Hafner-Eaton, PhD, MPH, CHES, IBCLC   email: [log in to unmask]
                HSR & Health Educational Consultant