What has brought on this post is 6 weeks ago we got Reepicheep neutered. He was acting neurotic and causing problems so we felt it was best for the majority of the group (the ones he was hen pecking) if he was neutered and put in with the girls. If you’re thinking “I thought you only did that for health reasons?” yes. Mental health counts and if the only way he cannot be alone and no-one else gets stressed out or hurt, including himself, at the age of 6, is to neuter him well that’s how it is.
We figured at his “advancing” age that we would be as well neutering him than implanting. Really his dad lived to 9 but health problems start to arise at this point. One of the factors in the decision was even is this hormonal or is he in pain? Since it began at this point in his life. For better or worse we settled on the most easily accessed quickest method of deduction.
Now that he’s safe to be with the girls it’s very obvious that his hormones have been messed with. His coat has suddenly become very wooly with very little top coat. Hopefully the top coat will come in soon, he is mid shed, but this is a well-known side effect to neutering mammals.
Those who have visited us, or followed our social media for a while, will know we have border terriers. Borders have a double coat similar to a ferrets with a soft warm undercoat and a waterproof top coat. The similarities end about there with the top coats having different textures and ferrets grooming themselves like cats where as BTs need to be Stripped. This is when the dead upper coat is removed leaving only the undercoat. The top coat then grows back.
When a border is neutered his or her coat often goes wooly, he loses his top coat and his coat becomes un-strippable. It then has to be clipped, changing the texture more, making the colour paler and stopping the coats properties (waterproof, temperature regulation) and can lead to some skin problems. This doesn’t happen with all borders who are neutered. Just last week I spent the week with a 15 year old whose coat is still strippable. This may be due to very later neutering after a health scare, but I’ve seen young neutered dogs with decent coats and late neuters with wooly coats.
It goes beyond coats too. Messing about with hormones can lead to a variety of different types of problems, cosmetic and health, on a vast scale of negligible to life threatening. All a role of the die, though waiting until mental and physical maturity certainly seems to reduce the odds of big changes in metabolism. One thing is certain. When I was 6 I would point to dogs and tell you if they were intact or not just by looking and was rarely wrong.
This is why when women and men are sterilised by removal of gametes they go through lots of post op testing. Dr Karen Becker has done a video on neutering dogs which is very applicable here. She found links to Cushing’s disease and neutering by realising the link between adrenal and neutering in ferrets. I would very much recommend it before making a decision. On the subject of adrenal most of the studies done on adrenal are from the US where it is normal practice for ferret mill kits, the main breeders of ferrets there, to be neutered at 6 weeks, very much against the advice of anyone who cares about long term health. While I will admit this is very likely a factor in the prevalence of adrenal in ferrets across the pond I personally disagree with the young age being the defining factor on a ferret developing adrenal. As well as such things likely having a genetic factor too it is not just ferrets neutered so young who are included in this highest risk at developing adrenal disease. I am of the opinion of Neutering itself being the defining factor.
Our Eva who passed only a few weeks ago had been being treated for adrenal for a good couple of years, previously having the implant to prevent this anyway. She was our first personal experience with adrenal. She was also, until we neutered Reepicheep, the only one of our ferrets to be neutered. We got her already neutered from a girl who rehomed her from a rescue. She was neutered that winter, a mere few months at most before we got her. We were told she was about one but we would place her at 3/4 going by her teeth. Either way she was not neutered prematurely, and so by the logic some preach should not have been likely to develop adrenal, or no more likely than any other ferret we have ever owned.
Perhaps we were just due and it was an unlucky coincidence. I’ll let you be the judge.
A link to Karen Becker on Neutering. Warning: it is an emotional video, it is her story and no matter how professionally she presents her “journey of discovery” there was guilt and pain on the way which cannot be left behind in the telling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enPCZA1WFKY