Foreign body ingestion
Like any other animal, curious ferrets can chew, eat, or accidentally swallow a variety of foreign objects. These objects usually remain in the stomach and can even block the ferret’s intestines.
Symptoms and types
The most common symptoms seen in ferrets with a foreign body in their stomach are vomiting, diarrhea, or difficulty passing stool.
Other symptoms include:
- Loss of appetite
- Grit your teeth
- Teeth grinding
- Excessive saliva production
- Sharp abdominal pain
- Blood in stool
- Inflammation of the stomach lining (gastritis)
There are many different household items that ferrets can ingest, including the following:
- Hairballs (common during shedding season)
- Soft Rubber
- Plastic products
- bedding
- clothes
- Baby bottle nipple
- pacifier
Recently weaned ferrets have been known to chew on bedding, and baby ferrets love to chew on bottle nipples and any pacifiers they find in the vicinity.
diagnosis
An x-ray is usually enough to diagnose a foreign body in a ferret’s stomach, but an endoscopy may be necessary.
process
Soft objects in the stomach or that are not blocking the intestines can be passed through your ferret’s stool with laxatives. If the digestive tract is blocked, surgery may be necessary, but ferrets usually recover well from this type of surgery.
Featured image: iStockphoto.com/xavierarnau
