Your Best Ever Working Ferret ?

[Guest vin]

Hello all.

 

Over the years I have had and seen work some very good ferrets...Hobs and Jills of all shapes and sizes etc etc.

 

Sometimes you get young kits that you have bred off proven workers to workers and one or 2 of the litter turn out to be Superstars and the rest don't get above average.

 

You have a litter of lets say 8 kits and they all look the same shape and size,equal numbers of sex . . What makes the ones stand out from the pack and go on to become the best workers.. ?

 

In the past i have chosen the hardest kit in the pack and also the softest and neither made any difference to the outcome.

 

I've indulged in the fad types of micros and cute looking little fellas . . .. but I cant say any of the shapes,sizes,colors and also diet have made any difference in the types of grafters I have seen and worked so far. . . Don't get me wrong i do feed mine a good raw diet...but i have mates who feed Kibble and cat biscuits and other who feed tinned dog/cat food/pouches etc etc and at the end of the day the ferrets they worked were of a better standard than my meat fed offspring. . .lol.

 

Its not the point of getting them the graft and showing them the game... I have plenty of warrens with rabbits to test them on etc etc.

 

How long do you try them for ?

 

How many excuses do you make for your ferrets leaving bunnies in a warren before you accept that the ferret is not a good worker ?

 

In the past i have gone a full season and longer trying them out and giving them lots of opportunities to shine etc etc. . . But If I am 100% honest the ones that are good are usually good from the 1st time out and they just get better until you end up taking the same ones out and maybe having a couple of back-ups for emergencies.

 

What do you all think about Hobs being better workers than Jills ? Which do you think mature and start work the quickest ?

 

So at the end of all my ramblings my main question is.... wherever,whatever it was or came from..Was your best ever worker good from the 1st time out or did it take a long time for the penny to drop before it became good ? or was it a gradual process that improved from the amount of work and experience you gave it..?

 

 

 

 

[Wales1234 5,424]

Totally novice question vin but how to call a ferret a good worker and a bad worker ? Some rabbits will bolt from just seeing a ferret wont they? Sorry if I sound dull?

[darbo 4,774]

I have usually bought ferrets in i have only bred 3 litters in the last 20 odd years. The best were 2 jills one about 10 years ago which i didnt breed from but with hindsight should have done i had her litter sister also who was not to her standard. The next jill who was as good as the one i have mentioned i bred last year to a hob i have who is a decent worker. She died a short time ago which gutted me age 4. Both these jills went from day one. Out of the litter i have kept back 2 jills and 2 hobs they were a late litter they have only been lightly worked. This season they will be tested. 1 jill and 1 Hob went straight away 1 hob and jill are messing about up to now. At the end of this season i will have a idea if the mating was a waste of time or not. I have had slow starters before that came good but im honest enough to say i have had some rubbish before its no point bullshitting yourself. Only by my own experiences i would say some hobs i have had took longer to get going than the jills i have had before generally speaking.

[whippet 99 2,613]

hobbs mature quicker and work at a younger age more naturally than gills, ...this is what ive found through my own strain, ....maybe different with others , anyway I have too agree with you vin the ones what turn out the best are the ones what are first entered and work so naturally as if it done it loads of times. and then get better and better. I wouldn't say my ferrets are tested as they may get out once/ twice a week as too someone who works them four/five times a week , so being a novice I just enjoy them and keep the best too breed from the best. ive had a few good jills but im not really bothered now what I use, some only use jills so that there smaller and give there quarry that extra room too squeeze past. I was the same but now i seen some good hobbs what will kill and carry on working and work through burrows very fast . find the hobbs killing quicker and moving on , quicker than the gills ,. theres pros and cons in both sexes , which has left me not preferring any sex , as long as there working the burrows and im happy theres nothing left .

[Raymond 618]

I had a sandy hob I got of a member of the forum, turned out very good ferret.Got a few good years out of him. Ive an albino hob and hes flying so far this season,the way I like it.Hes getting me a couple of diggs,not too deep.

[gnipper 5,948]

I've had 3 really good ferrets over the years, 2 were off an old guy in his 80s who used to be the local gamekeeper who had the strain for donkeys years and one was off a guy who hardly ever worked his but the jill was a cracker and was brilliant at ratting.

[Guest vin]

Totally novice question vin but how to call a ferret a good worker and a bad worker ? Some rabbits will bolt from just seeing a ferret wont they? Sorry if I sound dull?

good worker = one that can find a rabbit anywhere and kill or hold it till the spade is upon it.. and can do this all day just for the shear love of it.

 

bad worker = one that pretends to be working but is only actually going through the warren and coming out leaving rabbits up stop ends etc etc.

 

Its not a novice question at all Owain. . . Some people prefer ferrets that do not stay below ground because they don't like digging or they are working warrens that are impossible to dig etc etc. . they all have a place in the team sometimes...Its just that you need to know who is doing what and how they work so you can adjust you set ups for different types of jobs. . . Not much point dropping a driller killer of a hob under a load of concrete or rock sets that are impossible to dig. . . Or the chaps working with Bird of Prey prefer the ones that don't stick below ground.

 

I personally prefer an out and out killer that lives to hunt.

[Guest vin]

I've had 3 really good ferrets over the years, 2 were off an old guy in his 80s who used to be the local gamekeeper who had the strain for donkeys years and one was off a guy who hardly ever worked his but the jill was a cracker and was brilliant at ratting.

 

ratting is a different game altogether with the ferrets. . . most of todays strains have never seen a rat.

[Hywel 53]

Interesting post this one Vin. I keep both hobs and jills for the job, but have more jills. When watching them work from the onset, I would agree with whippet 99 that the hobs tend to settle down quicker. Of my best workers, they have taken to the task without much bother but by the time they are into their second season their progress is quite noticeable in that they are more thorough in searching the warrens. By the time you hit the Christmas period in the second season I feel they should really be grafting or its time to part company. I prefer to work the smaller/medium sized ferrets from choice, as in the past when using larger specimens have found it a pain in the backside to reset purse nets in thick hedgerow when the workers move from hole to hole above ground.

 

I tend to breed my own due to the pitfalls of buying in unknown quantities, but having said that I had a couple of jills off whippet 99 for last season which are working well

[terryd 8,043]

I have a couple of nice jills at the moment. A little white one that gets down to business and recently winkled rabbits out of some big warrens on her own. She is the type that will go any where even in the yard she will climb up or down any thing compared to my sandy jill who is not quite so confident. But last year year I saw 3 rabbits go to ground and she bolted them one at a time and turned round and went back in till all 3 were out I quite impressed by the way she went about it. Also both are no problem to pick up when working and don't mess about

[Hywel 53]

 

I've had 3 really good ferrets over the years, 2 were off an old guy in his 80s who used to be the local gamekeeper who had the strain for donkeys years and one was off a guy who hardly ever worked his but the jill was a cracker and was brilliant at ratting.

 

ratting is a different game altogether with the ferrets. . . most of todays strains have never seen a rat.

 

In the past when I was ferreting a pheasant shoot in the West Country, I regularly used to flush rats from rabbit warrens.

[Guest vin]

in the past we used to hunt rats on Sundays with the ferrets... the 1st time i saw Jonny D and his black n tans with the chainsaw smoker was the last time we used a ferret for rats...lol.

 

we often bump into the odd one or 2 in old warrens and the ferts love a rumble, but not like the old days when the ferrets needed a week off to reduce the swellings..lol.

 

i still know a couple of lads from Barnsley who use ferrets for ratting all the time. . . . not many last more than a season.

[paulf 820]

I cant say that I have had a lot of really good working ferrets but the only one which I would have now was nicked from my garden years ago .

this jill would stay as long as there was a rabbit below ground if she had it in a stop end she would kill quickly and we would dig down to her .

had a few since that were ok but not a patch on her .

[The one 8,397]

I always thought my first ferret was a good worker but i now think thats just fond memory;s Theres ten jills and two hobs here and every ones a true grafter ive moved on from ferreting just on a sunday from when i started as a 12 year old kid and have different permission's in different counties and these ferrets will bolt or kill rabbits untill dug out from small burrow to large bankings with 100's of hole's to big deep sandy burrows that go off the box

[gnipper 5,948]

in the past we used to hunt rats on Sundays with the ferrets... the 1st time i saw Jonny D and his black n tans with the chainsaw smoker was the last time we used a ferret for rats...lol.

 

we often bump into the odd one or 2 in old warrens and the ferts love a rumble, but not like the old days when the ferrets needed a week off to reduce the swellings..lol.

 

i still know a couple of lads from Barnsley who use ferrets for ratting all the time. . . . not many last more than a season.

The white jill I had was marked up like a terrier it had been nipped that many times but she went back again and again and loved a good scrap. All 3 of those ferrets i mentioned arelong gone now but I'd love them back today and I would breed the two off the old keeper together and keep them all.