Well, ever since I've known this ferret (he's 4 1/2 and i've had him about two years) he's always seemed to have bouts of diahrrea.. most of the time it was ok, just every now and then. But a few times he would lose a lot of weight and get dehydrated and I'd have to nurse him well again.. Well, it seems like it's been happening more often this past year.. Once I even had to take him in to get sub q fluids.. And then another one of my ferrets (one of Jaspers best buddies) died this summer - which he had a bad case of diahhrea and vomiting after that. My vet and I both thought this was brought on by stress of losing his friend.. Well, I got another ferret about a month and a half ago, and Jasper's diahhrea started up again.. he's lost almost a pound.... I took him in to see what to do, and my vet thought since it coincided with getting the other ferret that it was probably just stress again and to just give TLC with extra nutricious food (
duck soup, ferretvite) with a little pepto and that perhaps he'd start to get better.. But, I took him back this Monday and he hadn't gained any weight (it'd been two weeks), and he's still having the diahhrea so she decided to do blood work.. Apparently, it still could be other things, and the only way to definitely tell if it is IBD is to do a biopsy, but my vet said that a lot of times IBD occurs with a high lipase level in the blood for unknown reasons. Jasper's levels were 2x what they should be - so, that leads her to believe it may be IBD.. It may not, but its the best lead we have to go on right now. The prednisone is to curb the inflammation, and hopefully get the diahhrea under control.. then hopefully just with diet (it is a low allergen diet) we can get the disease under control......
