(Warning: somehow this turned into a very long post...)
Well, the biopsy results came back. The biopsy of his stomach showed an overabundance of helicobacter (which, thankfully, we were already treating for. Dr. Edling put him on antibiotics and carafate following surgery). The biopsy of his intestines showed a massive inflammation in his intestines and indicated that he has IBD, or Inflammatory Bowel Disease.
So what does that mean? It means that he can no longer have any food or treats that contain chicken, corn or wheat, so everything he has ever had and liked before is out. Guess what every single ferret food but one has in it? Chicken. Guess what the one non-chicken ferret diet has in it? Wheat and corn. So Jebabba will never eat ferret food again. I had to throw away all his favorite treats - N-Bones, Chicken Bandits, Chicken baby food. (Well, I didn't throw them away, I donated them to Oxford Ferret Rescue.)
It also means that he's on prednisolone twice a day. Imuran is another option to treat IBD in ferrets, but it can take up to 2 months to start working fully, and given how horribly inflamed his intestines are, we didn't think we had enough time to wait for that to work.
So Friday - I get his new food, grind it up, and mix it with some water and some Beechnut baby food (can't use Gerber's anymore, it has corn starch in it). He hates it. I end up wearing most of it and most of the medicine I have to give him (at this point, Biaxin and Pred). We're both miserable by the time we're done, and I literally have to wash off my arms up to my shoulders. Following this, I am completely and totally depressed. Poor Jebabba hasn't eaten a decent meal in almost 4 weeks, he's down to 1 lb 6 oz, and I can't remember the last time he's had a solid, normal poop. I picture having to force feed him every meal for the rest of his life.
So the next day, I go out to pick up some Innova Evo wet food and the Innova Evo Red Meat Small Bites dry food that has been recommended to me (Evo diets have very low carbs, no corn or grains, alternate high protein meat sources). I mix up the following recipe:
(1) can of
Evo Rabbit(1) jar of Beechnut Beef baby food
(2.5) tsps of
Evo Red Meat Small Bites(1) baby food jar of water
(1) huge squirt of olive oil
So I blend this all together, pour it into containers, heat up one of the containers and bring it in to Jebabba. He licks a little off my finger and keeps coming back for more. So I pour a little in the lid of the container, and he starts chowing down! He probably ate about 15 - 20 cc's in one sitting! He absolutely loves this food! Of course, I'm grinning like an idiot by this point, and I'm so excited, I actually call Steve in to see.
Jebabba is now back to eating regular 30 cc's meals, with a couple additional feedings. He had his first completely normal poop (fully formed, regular color) on Saturday night, and has had all normal poop since.
I made him a duck version of the same soup last night, using Evo Duck and Hills d/d Duck & Green Pea dry food, and he liked that too. Not as much as the rabbit one, but enough that he chowed down on 30 cc's this morning.
I really like the Evo wet foods because they not only use the meat of the animal, but they use bones, fat, cartilage and connective tissue as well. It's about as close to a raw diet as I can get without actually feeding raw. I wish I had known about this diet before - I would have been feeding it all along! The only downside is that because it is dog food, it's lower in taurine, so I will have to supplement that. But honestly, all I care about at this point is that he's eating better, looking better, and he actually played for a couple minutes this morning!
ferret,
ferrets,
IBD,
Inflammatory Bowel Disease,
helicobacter,
Marshall Bandits,
Oxford Ferret Rescue,
Hills d/d,
Innova Evo,
Innova Evo Red Meat,
prednisolone,
Imuran,
Beechnut baby food
