[email protected]

On Thu, 24 Oct 2002 17:01:38 -0500 james e thomas <meplusfive@...>
writes:
> You make ferrets sound so great!! are they really easy to litter
> train and how do you do it?

They'll almost always poop in a corner, so you stick newspapers in all
the corners, see which one(s) get used, and put a litter box there. That
was really all... they even make corner-shaped little boxes for ferrets
now. My ferret was an abused and abandoned ferret (a recurrent theme for
my pets), and she was very small for a ferret, she weighed just under a
pound. I used plastic tupperware containers as litterboxes, they were
about 8" x 8". My parents had cages for their ferrets, very large ones
and they ran around a lot, but they never did end up reliably litterbox
trained - I think their house was too big and they needed to have a
couple boxes at least. They had, at one time, 4 ferrets, 3 dogs, 2 pygmy
hedgehogs (mean little buggers, although other people have told me
they've had nice ones) and a chinchilla. The very, very sad day was when
someone left the chinchilla and the ferrets running around together :-(

> I had someone tell me that ferrets needed to be watched all of the
time
> (no free roaming) because they will try to get out any hole they
> could find.

They can go through very small holes, about the size of a quarter is what
I've heard. I wouldn't want holes that size leading out of my house,
though... and Maia never tried to sneak out or anything. They're curious,
but they're a domesticated animal - Maia never wanted to leave, she came
when I called her (I gave her nutrimalt as a reward when training her).

> Do they become gentle and wanting affection like a cat or dog?

Maia definitely did, and so did my parents' four, although to varying
degrees. Part of that may be because there were 4 of them - the rat we
had as an only rat is definitely the most affectionate, because she's had
the most attention. Buddy was the albino ferret who loved Spike the blue
heeler, he was quite snuggly. They sleep a lot but when they're up, they
tend to be more playful than cuddly. Maia would play for a while, then
crawl around and then curl up next to me and fall asleep.

She died when Rain was a year and a half old, and she was around 8 years
old then. All of our ferrets have been fine with kids except one of my
parent's females, who was the least affectionate and occasionally nipped.
They aren't great pets for little kids, although Rain loved Maia - I
personally think guinea pigs are the perfect "small" pets for toddlers,
because they're big enough that they can't be easily squeezed and they're
placid enough to not run away. But it's hard for a real little kid to
play with a wriggly ferret. My sister was around 6 when my parents' got
their first one, though, and she was the one who convinced them to
acquire 3 more over the next couple of years...

Dar