Anyone with a ferret?!! please answers?!?!?! (hair loss/shedding?)?

i have a ferret named sammi and shes almost 3 years old. i brushed her today, because shes been shedding a lot but when i brushed her around the neck a lot of hair came off. what used to be long dark hair is now really short white/light brown hair (around the neck). im just wondering is this normal? do they loos extra hair around the neck while shedding or is this somthing i should be worried about? anybody have a ferret that looses a lot of hair too when it sheds? im worried :[Anyone with a ferret?!! please answers?!?!?! (hair loss/shedding?)?
Most ferrets are changing coats around this time of year (they do so twice a year - before winter they get a thicker coat and before summer they get a lighter coat). It usually happens gradually and you don't really notice until one day they have a thicker or lighter coat. When one of mine (Willow) shed her last coat, she lost all of her guard hairs (the guard hairs are what give them their color and pattern, my Willow is dark grey - a black roan mitt) practically over night and was left with nothing more than her short, fluffy white/cream undercoat. Her new coat then grew back in over a one to two week period and she was back to her dark grey color. It almost sounds like that could be what is happening with your Sammi. Those shorter, lighter colored hairs are most likely the undercoat. The long, dark hairs that she's losing are her guard hairs. Since you said she's been shedding, I think she's most likely just losing her old coat and preparing for her new coat to come in. I'd just watch her for the next few weeks. If the hair doesn't grow back in and/or it gets worst and you start to notice bald spots, then I would start to consider adrenal gland disease or some other issue that would require a vet check (AD is the illness that most commonly causes hair loss in ferrets, but other things can cause it as well).Anyone with a ferret?!! please answers?!?!?! (hair loss/shedding?)?
umm so my ferret went bald a few time and what i gave him was Melatonin liquid that you can purchase over the counter . it has many purposes one is to help people sleep but also one is to help regrowth of hair follicles . i gave him a few drops every day until his hair grew back and it did. but also ferrets are prone to adrenal gland disease so make sure with a vet that it's not that because , if so that can also make them lose hair, but he seems to young yet to have that .... so check out the melatonin in liquid form it comes with a dropper it helped my ferret!
Mine would do a major hair loss before Christmas, he basically 'blew' his coat in 4 or 5 days, all the guard hairs came off in that time, but the undercoat stayed.





It's normal to shed out quickly sometimes.
ok I'm going to make a couple of assumptions here.....


You are in the US.


Sammi lives indoors.


She was desexed prior to being 6 months old.


She is fed dry ferret food.


Please let me know if any of these are incorrect......This is likely an indication that she has early Adrenal Disease, and or the begining of Lymphoma. Both need to be seen assessed and treated by an experienced ferret vet.


I have cheated slightly because it is quite long and done the old cut and paste job.





The following is a previous answer I wrote for another owner with almost the same question.





I hope it helps .........





Adrenal Disease. The main cause is too much light. Feeding dry food ar lots of carbohydrates seems to increase the rate of the disease. Unfortunately it is rare that a ferret only has AD. Normally they will have insulinoma as well.


Ferrets hormones are regulated by the number of hours of daylight, and the more light, the less melatonin is produced. Melatonin regulates hair growth, appetite, testosterone and lots of other things.


So an indoor ferret is getting enough light to be in breeding mode all year round instead of only 3 - 5 months.


There is a huge amount of info on the internet if you can sort through and find the research based info. There is a lot of so-so stuff as well!


There is a lot of things they can do to ease the symptoms, and surgeries to remove adrenal glands and all sorts of other things, but do your research first to see if your prepared for the cost, possible side effects and ongoing higher level of care and medication.





In the mean time giving him small level doses of melatonin may help, but try to find an experienced ferret specialist vet to discuss the options with, and weather there is a ferret vet in your area.





I rescued a ferret 12mths ago who displayed all the AD symptoms within 3months of getting him. Here we have very few resources for ferrets and no vet that I could find who had successfully performed AD surgery. I cut his light down to 5hrs a day and had him on a homeopathic melatonin. He did very well till the other issues started to cause him discomfort 2 months ago.





Having a science background and never having had an AD ferret before (mine have always lived primarily outside on a raw meat diet) I found a lot of the info on chat sites and stuff either useless or impossible to be correct, but it did give me a few links and ideas. I also found a couple of vets this way that I corresponded with, and were able to point me to universities that had research papers on these types of diseases in ferrets.


I also got on to some pharmacutical info on new treatments.





Unfortunately I have deleted these sights from my computers history since then.





But look at 'treatment for adrenal disease in ferrets, ferret adrenal disease, diseases of ferrets, disease research of ferrets, mustiloid disease' and any other variation you can think of.