question on housing ferrets

[scottish lurcher 185]

wondering if anyone can help me i was think of getting some ferrets i would like to keep a couple of jills my problem is i have had to move to a smaller house, and dont have enough garden space to keep them outside, so need to keep them indoors but iam worried about the smell in the house would thank anybody out there for there input

[micky 3,325]

wondering if anyone can help me i was think of getting some ferrets i would like to keep a couple of jills my problem is i have had to move to a smaller house, and dont have enough garden space to keep them outside, so need to keep them indoors but iam worried about the smell in the house would thank anybody out there for there input

they wont notice it

[welshhound2 20]

cat liter in a tray,will keep the smell down plus regular cleaning

[lone wolf 0]

feeding dried food also helps with the smell mate

[Guest Frank]

In my opinion, ferrets are better off outside in a hutch made for them, more healthier for them.

 

Frank.

[Kay 3,709]

In my opinion, ferrets are better off outside in a hutch made for them, more healthier for them.

 

Frank.

 

I agree Frank, i get worried about these illnesses peoples ferrets get such as adrenal disease, which some of the american vets are now thinking unatural amounts of light are a contribution to the disease

 

What effect does lighting have on adrenal disease and hair loss?

No one is really sure why adrenal disease is common in ferrets. One theory is that artificially increased "day lengths," due to humans keeping the lights on when it's dark outside, somehow interfere with the proper functioning of the adrenal glands and, over the long term, may contribute to the development of the disease. No formal tests have been done, but still, some people try to keep their ferrets in areas without artificial lights at night, or at least try to keep the lighting low, in the hopes that it will help prevent adrenal disease.

However, most people agree that artificial light cycles can't cure adrenal disease once it's begun.

 

So i would house outdoors

[Ossie 11]

i've got 6 ferrets, pets not workers. 2 of them were bought from working stock to be kept as pets. they lived perfectly happily in a couple of modified guinea pig cages in my caravan for nearly a year. they actually prefer being indoors. but smells are an issue, the ferrety odour being particularly pungent! the 2 boys i had indoors were castrated, so it wasnt so bad. don't know if you can still get it, but there used to be a ferret deodorising shampoo that i used on them, takes the smell right out. i feed dry food too, as this really cuts down the odour. for god's sake don't give them fish! :sick: really, it's that bad.

if you keep jills, make sure the bars on the cage aren't too far apart. all my girls can escape from my cage, which has 1" spaced bars. nothing more than 1/2" will keep them in.

the worst problem indoor ferrets get is dry skin. they scratch a lot anyway, ferrets are itchy little things, but if their coats get dandruff-y, a bit of olive oil on their food helps. don't let them get too hot either. they cope really well in freezing temperatures, but will quickly become very ill & can die when they overheat.

really though, they don't need all that much space outside. my cousin keeps his workers in hutches made from old tea chests. don't forget, they are adept at climbing (not so great at getting down, mind). think vertical with the housing. several different levels, with something different in each, ladders inbetween. i've seen hutches like that made from old wardrobes.

as long as you keep them clean, and let them out for a bit of a runaround every once in a while they'll be fine. and plenty of toys! they love having tubes to hide in, and they really like rubbery toys. mine all have a mini Kong toy, they just pick it up & hide it, then you find it, give it back to them, and so on... keeps their little brains active, they are suprisingly clever little things!

Edited January 30, 2007 by Ossie

[Guest Ditch_Shitter]

FFS! What's Up with some of you people??? American Vet's, castration, dry food?

 

Listen; A quarter of a Century ago I moved into a third floor flat. No garden and just two rooms to live in. Did it stop me keeping a mess of damn good Working ferrets? Did it f*ck! Did I castrate them? Shampoo them? Feed them shit we wouldn't have offered as Rat Bait? Read what a nation who's 99% only ever known ferrets as a new fad Pet had to say on the subject? I Think Not!

 

What I did was set to and build a f*cking great - wait for it! - Glass Fronted Cabinet on casters! I f*ck ye not! Bloody huge affair. Three tier. I struck holes through the cielings / floors and in between the dividing walls of it. They had various compartments of a foot square up to three by one foot. All interconnected via pop holes. Being made of scrounged 'Black Pine' effect and formica'd boards, it weighed a ton and so the heavy duty castors probably cost me more than the entire unit put together.

 

I begged the three lengths of glass and syliconed them in. Then ran black insulating tape along all the outwardly visible joints, just for a tidy eye appeal. At the back I had half height, hinged, flap down doors to each compartment, liberally supplied with 2" holes through them, covered by standard, plastic 'air vent' covers.

 

In that unit I carried on perfectly as normal. I fed Only fresh, whole dead things. I used wood shavings for the floors and hay for the nests. I cleaned the latrines out once or twice a day and never had a problem. I kept a whole range of ferrets, old and new, in there. Bred the f*kkas in there! Young were born and raised and worked.

 

Smell? What smell? Smell of fresh wood and hay? Slight tang of animal probably in there somewhere - to those not accustomed to animals around them?

 

If ye feel the need to cut off, wash off or otherwise meddle with a NATURAL animal, in order to make it better fit ye own ideas of how it 'ought to be', I can only suggest ye might as well accept that animal isn't really what ye best suited to. Why try to ram a square peg into Your round hole? Want a monkey that behaves like a Dog? F*ck the monkey. Get a Dog. Don't want a Dog that barks and bites things? Get a f*cking gold fish!

 

These creatures don't Ask us to take them on. We Choose to. Why is it only women tend to say; " Well, he's got his ways ..... But I'll soon change him! " If it doesn't suite ye as it should be? Ye probably not best suited. Accept that basis and ye won't go too far wrong

[Ossie 11]

i grew up with ferrets, my dad has always had working lurchers, terriers & ferrets. i love the ferrety smell! i've had hundreds of them in my short life, ferreted with my dad every weekend when i was little.

i had my boys castrated to stop them tearing lumps out of each other in spring. that's the only reason. my dad's boys rip the skin clean off each others necks. the smell being reduced was just a side-effect. i keep a bottle of shampoo around for when i get strays, i've had them turn up in some pretty bad states (one had just come out of a ditch when i picked him up, jesus, what a stench!). and i used to give the boys the odd bath when they were indoors, cos they'd sleep in my boots & come out smelling bloody awful (i'm not one for odour-eaters). i feed dry because i can't guarantee a regular supply of fresh. and there's no f**king way i'd ever feed them anything that had been frozen. they also get dog-caught rabbit and the odd bit of roadkill, which gets split between all of us (dog, cat, ferrets, me...). they all live outside now, and are all perfectly healthy being kept like this..

i bloody hate people who have them for this new fad, i know of a girl who keeps 1 on its own, dresses it up, christ! even paris hilton has a ferret (wait til she gets bit!!!). keeping them as pets was a bit of an experiment for me, started nearly 5 years ago. i'd only ever had workers up til then, and i wanted to see if they could be kept as pets, and what they're like under those circumstances. been a pretty successful experiment so far. love em to bits, much prefer them to cats & dogs.

 

DS, i value your opinions, you're posts have kept me interested & amused since i joined this forum (how the hell is the Flora doing anyway? green yet?). i recognise you as being someone with a lot more experience than i have, in many areas. hell, i'm only 23, i've a lot to learn about a lot things, i know that. this forum is a goldmine of information, and i hope to learn much from it. scottish lurcher asked for opinions on keeping ferrets indoors with particular relevance to the smell, i replied with what i know from my own personal experience, and gave advice weighted towards their particular issues, and i'm sure everyone else did too.

 

p.s. and i'm not one of those women who tries to change men! they always seem to want to change me. if it ain't broke don't fix it, i say!

Edited January 30, 2007 by Ossie

[Guest Ditch_Shitter]

Ossie; Isn't that the very essence of fora? It's like american tv; Ye get to pick and choose between everything from the 'Big Movie' channel to the stations where any goon with a web cam can be on there. People get to flick, switch, choose. They don't have to read me. Don't have to read you. Just glance at who's on and move on it they don't think it'll be to their tastes, based on past experiance.

 

That's why I seldom hold back and Never alter my way. People are more than welcome to ignore my posts. Debate with me if they wish, by all means. Long as they argue against my words and not their percieved idea of my personallity.

 

I also, quite often and well enough publicly statedly, 'Speak to the Gallery'. As in, A will ask a question, " 1 A ". I'll offer my answer to A's question. But I'll also add some of my own ideas around A's original question. Thus attempting and hoping to expand the discussion and maybe throw some light on questions 1 B and 1C. As yet unasked. But maybe playing on the minds of those reading or even inspired by question 1A. See what I'm talking about?

 

I'm not Mr Experiance. I don't know half of what there is to know about Anything. I crave more learning about Everything and that's what I haunt this place for.

 

But some things I've just about done to death. Some things are pretty well imutable. Some things I've come to find stand the empirical test of time and again trial. These are the things I hold close and stand by. I'll try to save others the time of proving the proven, while remaining open to yet newer, fresher in put. Einstein may yet be proven a c***. Who knows? But, for now, he seems to have got certain things pretty well weighed off.

 

Hobs ripping chunks out of each other? Keep them seperated. Two Hobs who don't get to interact don't get to rip. In nature they'd seperate themselves by dint of marking their seperate patches. With their smell. Mother Nature doesn't come out of the clouds with a pair of scissors.

 

Ferrets smelling because of ye boots? Your boots. Your smell. Wash ye socks, not ye ferrets. Ferret out of a ditch? It's own, natural cleansing activities and (unwashed out) body oils will soon take care of any temporary smell attatching to it.

 

What's wrong with correctly, fast, deep frozen grub? I and a whole load of mates kept bun heads and such in our freezers, properly defrosted them and fed our ferrets on them, year in, year out. I honestly don't understand ye viewpoint on frozen feed. Like I say; Always hungry to learn more.

 

I hate anyone who wants and gets Any creature on the wave of a fad. Be it ferrets, 'Pit Bulls', cockatiels or tropical fish. People such as that tend to then start trying to find new ways of hammering their newly aquired square pegs into their own round holes. That's where we get this whole American idea base about if ye live in a central New York appartment and fancy being seen with a ferret? Fine. Feed it shit. Ye've never seen dead fur in ye life; But we can let ye folllow the trend, at a price. Buy the 'Siamese Black Footed Silver (Pedigree) Ferret' of ye dreams; We have the commercial industry just revving in the wings waiting to help ye spend ye money on making it all 'work' - for you; F*ck the creatures ways, needs and preferances.

 

Like I say; If people don't want Dog hairs in their home? Don't get a Dog. There's an inherrant clash there.

 

 

" p.s. and i'm not one of those women who tries to change men! they always seem to want to change me. if it ain't broke don't fix it, i say! "

 

Same for male ferrets. Leave them seperated. Don't 'Get them " Fixed " '.

 

 

04:02. 'Night

[Kay 3,709]

I agree with your points on the shampoo and if a ferret is kept clean it shouldnt smell but i also choose ti castrate my last two ferrets as i wanted them to live together without the worry of the seasonal ragging, i lost a vasectomised hob to testicular cancer many yrs ago , so thats another reason i would choose to castrate.

 

I couldnt keep the two hob kits i have now in the house for good as my husband has an allergy to them but i do worry about ferrets being kept indoors due to the unatural amount of light that they would be prolonged to

 

I also think the new wave of ferret owners seem to think ferrets are toys , to pick up & put down & perform on command, i dont agree with the american ways , all this fancy stuff you see advertised , hairball remedy & vitamin supliments its wrong, i dont think they need it, as for shampooing the ferret is more likely to smell stronger once its been shampood