Jax13
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Everything posted by Jax13
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I'd leave the shotgun until you get used to how the ferrets work. Last thing you want to do is turn one into a scarf.
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i only started last year and to be honest, aside from having someone to go out with and learn from the next best thing is a forum like this and youtube. get on youtube at night and watch ferreting videos - see how other people do it, how they work certain types of land then get out and try it for yourself. if it works great, if it doesn't then try something different the next weekend! the only hard and fast rules really are a finder with spare batteries, a spade and a handful of purse nets. anything above that is just making your life easier but your bag heavier! offering to tak
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i'm hoping to get down on the sunday and much to the missus' inevitable disapproval I would love to have a natter about nets! if we manage to get down there I will definitely try and find you.
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i got my first ferrets towards the end of the summer last year (as adolescents rather than kits!) and started them after xmas on the advice of others on here. they worked fairly well and got a good few rabbits under their belt and this year they seem a hell of a lot keener to get out there. my polecat marked jill is especially fidgety at the moment and made a break for freedom last week looking for holes down a new stretch of hedge that borders their hutch so I will be starting them in about 2-3 weeks once work dies down and i've got my weekends back.
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yeah its on the one where the hedge bottoms are like swiss cheese - everywhere!!! never seen so many dead in the field before. the crows & buzzards must be having a field day with it. when we get down there its gonna be interesting, we're gonna need a lot of nets because some of the warrens are 30 / 40 metres long and probably upwards of 100 holes each! on another note, if you know of any decent lurcher litters knocking about send me the details - we lost the ridgeback a couple of months ago and i want another pup!
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Unfortunately this is one permission where they aren't bothered about the size of the population as they have far more grazing space than they need for their herd size so I was looking forward to having one where I could be a bit selective and use it for sport rather than clearance. It belongs to a friend of the family too so it is a handy place to have access to.
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ive got rights on a fairly big farm with a huge bunny population and i was lookign forward to some big bags with the ferrets. I've nipped down once or twice with the rifle to work out where the decent warrens to attack first are (and to stick a couple in the freezer to keep the fezzers fed in the mean time) went down today for a couple of hours and mixy has exploded on there. took a dozen with the rapid tonight and each one is riddled with it which is really frustrating as it could potentially knock out huge numbers (walked past 5 or 6 dead in the fields in varying states of decay). reg
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cheers folks. ive split it into 6 small batches and diced it up to try and stop them hiding it (to be fair, mine don't normally cache their food they leave it in the bowl) they battered through the majority in about 3 minutes so i reckon it'll be done by the morning - its all they've got in there at the moment before they get a bunny in the morning so shouldn't be too problematic.
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i'm a caterer and often give the ferrets or dogs any trimmings i have if there is anything worth having. i've just prepped and filleted 2 large fresh salmon so have a lot of belly trim, neck end and tail end that is surplus to requirements. before i poach it all for the dogs tea tonight i was wondering if any of you feed fish to the ferrets? if so, raw or cooked? i'm assuming chucking a bit of diced raw fish into them won't do any harm al all but just thought i'd see what the advice was from those a bit more experienced than me!
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Mine were nice and clean at first then went through a phase when they came into season of crapping anywhere. They have now settled on the opposite end of the run to before (mine are in a chicken coup and run type hutch) and are tidy again. Try shovelling all the muck into one corner and see if that helps for the following day
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I'd avoid crowith if I were you. I have heard of a couple of people losing ferrets after feeding them. I think they may be hungry when you went to feed. Mine can be little sods if they are peckish and they will nip (or try to) so I've started throwing a few loose biscuits in the run or spread a line of malt paste across the run mesh for them to lick at when I come to feed up which has the bonus of them not all diving out of the hutch door when I open it to refill the food bowl!
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I noticed larger groups with eley than I used to get. Maybe the quality / consistency has slipped a little?
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could you put a slight overhang (length of skirting board or similar) on top of the wooden panels? should stop the buggers hauling themselves up if they get a bit adventurous
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sounds odd. if you can get a name for the treatment i can ask the missus to look into it & maybe phone the royal college and ask for advice on it. i just use frontline spray, a couple of pumps every couple of months and mine are spotless despite the hutches being a yard from the field hedge and me feeding just-shot rabbit through the year where the fleas may not even have abandoned ship between shooting and chucking it in for them if the bunnies have been bedroom window shots into the field beside the hutch!
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Ferrets love a game of fruit ninja!
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based on the theory of keeping the smaller mesh out of the way of the drawcord i am now adding the extra on top of my second knot on each row (making the short loop #3) and it seems to be working out pretty well. doing the same on the way back down and taking the mesh in on the second knot too. I am only increasing by 1 mesh on each row so haven't been adding at both ends but to be perfectly honest - the nets look no different! with any luck they will purse up a little bit quicker (although adding on the end still caught flying teddy bears perfectly fine when i tested them!)
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what would people say is the best age range to breed from their jills? with having absolutely no knowledge on ferret breeding i am curious to know what people think about the breeding career of their jills (and hobs for that matter) are you best leaving them a couple of years before you start? are you better stopping breeding from them at a certain age? is there any benefit to the ferret by breeding off her year on year? i was thinking i would maybe pick up a hob kit next year and then breed him at 2yo to my (at that time) 4yo jills giving me a couple of seasons to get the kits i
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we tend to see it in april if we get it. just as the temperature starts rising and the first batch of young ones are venturing out into the open. i have known farmers with mixy live catch a few in cage traps and offer them to friends / neighbours in the pub or at the cattle auctions. the problem is, too many land owners and tennant farmers have been subjected to too many morons over the years and you'll find some who simply won't allow a gun on their land which means they get over run with the little buggers in a couple of years and they then spread onto neighbouring land where there may
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will do dave - they'll still catch - its just bleddy irritating that they won't sit flat! when you load the needle, do you turn it forward and then back again or keep turning it in the same direction like a screw? does it even matter?
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i've made about 8 nets so far and no matter how i load the needle they seem to keep twisting in on me. of the couple of things i think could be the cause, one thing i thought was if adding a mesh onto the last loop on each row was the culprit? ive seen a few different tutorials and seen middle row and end row additions so don't know whether it is a cause of problems or not. they aren't terminal - they just roll in a little on the edge mesh or two and only twist once along the length of a 4ft net (no drawcord or pegs fitted as yet which could help straighten them a bit. i was also
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i can completely sympathise with you, when my little one arrived i started a new business at pretty much the same time and between the two, went about 3 years without shooting and only opened the cabinets every few months to give everything a quick wipe over to keep the rust at bay. it was also the reason i only got ferrets before the start of last season as i just didn't have time to put into them. it gets better and your time will come back after a while so don't be hasty! maybe try and rehome your ferrets and hutch to a local ferreter and keep your nets and locators etc. (that way y
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I'm pretty sure that by law deben must give a 12 month warranty if they are selling a new product. Could be wrong but I though that was the minimum.
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when i was looking last year they were the same price as anywhere else for a new one so i opted for using my local rfd so i have somewhere to take it back to should it go wrong. if you hunt around on there and drop lucky you should be able to grab a second hand mk3m with a couple of collars for round about the same price of a new one (so basically save yourself £60 - from new price). mk1's can still fetch £100 or more if the seller lists them to finish at the right time!
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If you meen to see if they bite i did and there both fine i had them eating a bit of mince out of my hand last night and there was no nipping but i did notice every time i took the food away they would have a little scrap. Is this usual or are they just establishing a pecking order? if you tried to take my dinner away before i'd finished with it i'd stab you with a fork! my hobs been on a bit of a diet since he has been away from the jills because he is a greedy sod and was carrying far too much weight (needed to keep feeding though or the jills were getting nothing) he has now ta
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No matter what you do to secure a hutch it will only take a screwdriver, pair of bolt cutters or tin snips to get in somewhere so why bother doing anything beyond a hasp and staple and simple padlock as a minor deterrent. The real trick is to make the garden as secure and uninviting as possible. Security lights, pyrocantha or similar through your hedges and borders, decent locked gates that can't be undone from outside or easily jumped over etc. would be a better measure IMHO.
