#thermometers

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I can add that there was a study for ferrets that you could use one of those baby forehead thermometers to get an accurate temperature between the shoulder blades. It was only one specific brand and my clinic has been trying it but it does not appear to match the rectal temperature. It’s usually 1-3 degrees off. Which isn’t a huge deal for a healthy ferret but if we’re getting a 103+ temp with a scan between the shoulder blades we are verifying it with a rectal thermometer to make sure it’s accurate. No animal is more uncooperative for a rectal temp than a ferret tbh. It would be great if we could have an alternative to rectal thermometers but they’re just not accurate for animals.

Hey, I’m sorry this is so late of an answer and not much help for Christmas anymore. :( For cheaper options, I like the Acurite thermometer/hygrometers like this one and have used them in my crab tank for a few years. I used one in Charis’s viv too, but she broke it off the wall, and then repeatedly knocked it off any perch, so that didn’t work great, lmao. I decided to go with station + sensor options like this for both the crabs and Charis now, though I haven’t really had them in use much yet. But hopefully they’ll last longer with the station being outside the enclosure (especially with the crabs). I gotta double check the humidity readings for all of them, to see how much they’re off by - if you need help figuring out how to do that, just google calibration test for hygrometer, you should get something about using a teaspoon of damp salt + sealed container. With the digital things, you can’t adjust it to be correct, but you can note down how much it’s off by so you can still keep track. I hope this is still a little helpful even though it’s so late!