Last weekend was J's commencement, and her parents, siblings, and my dad and step-mom journeyed to houston to attend the commencement on Saturday. It was a fun but busy weekend. Actually, it was incredibly stressful due to Luci (my ferret) getting extremely sick and having to be hospitalized at a emergency vet over the weekend. She developed severe diarrhea, ataxia, and dehydration on Friday. I fed her Ensure throughout the night to get her hydration/energy levels up. I took her in Saturday, and they did x-ray, which were negative. We feared obstruction or enteritis, but fecal samples were negative for bacteria, and there was no evidence for obstruction via x-rays or ultrasound (not like there would be one). Best way is a barium swallow or something similiar.

She returned to us on Monday, hydrated. Immediately she began eating again (abnormal for sick ferrets with enteritis or after surgury), and immediately, again, there was diarrhea, and she proceeded to go downhill again. Tuesday I had the bright idea of suspecting her new food (Zupreme ferret), which we bought last Sunday. The ferrets receive a 50/50 mix of Zupreme and Science Diet Hairball (they really like this, surprisingly). So i put her on 100% hairball food, and immediately (within 4 hours) her diarrhea cleared up and her energy and hydration states returned to normal.

So, it was the food after all. Contaminated? Not sure, but check out the Wikipedia reference to the 2007 pet food issue. Note our other ferret, Angel, didn't get noticeably sick. I think if there is a next time I'll maintain prophilatic care over the weekend until Monday, when the regular vet opens. The emergency stuff was extremely expensive, but they also provided a much higher level of care than my normal vet. Probably if we took her to our normal vet she would have died (they don't have a great track record for in-clinic hospitalization of my ferrets).

I guess i'm surprised that a) Luci's symptom onset was 5 days after the new food appeared. b) Angel didn't get sick. Maybe it's a food allergy, it could happen. I'm going to switch out for iams kitten and see if she tolerates that and the hairball mix. The hairball diet alone doesn't have enough protein for her.

Update: The recall list is here.
Zupreme isn't on there, but several types of Hills Science Diet food is (mostly in pouch/can form).