How to Take Care of a Ferret - Behavior and Medical Issues

Hi, I’m Robin with Ferrets First Rescue, teaching you how to take care of your ferrets. Now I’ll talk about behavioral misconceptions, required veterinary care and medical problems. One misconception is that ferrets bite, while a ferret you trained properly, they don’t bite. As with the puppy, a baby ferret is gonna use its teeth and its mouth to play with you. It’s up to you to teach your ferret how much you can tolerate. Unfortunately, ferrets have extremely tough skin and they just don’t realize that our skin is not as tough as theirs. So when they start to bite you too hard, you stop playing with them and you play with the, you rub their belly, you do something else, you stay away from their mouth. If you bring home a ferret who has a biting problem, the best way to take care of it is to do what a mother would do if they bit too hard, she would grab her by the scruff of the neck, and she would hiss at it, hiss. She wouldn’t flick it on his nose, or yell at it, she would just scruff it and hiss at it, hiss, and that will teach your ferret not to bite. Another misconception is that ferrets stink, well, ferrets are a member of the Mistela family and they do have musk glands, they produced musk, and the musk has an odor. Ferrets purchased today or in a store, they have their anal gland removed which means they can't poof like a skunk, but they’re still gonna produce musk. And the best way to control this musk and the odor of a ferret is one, you feed it a really good diet. We discuss diet before, you wanna keep the high protein, high fat and stay away from fish. Two, you wanna make sure you scoop their litter pan every day. Three is that you wanna change their bedding at least once a week, coz their gonna exchange their musk smell for the smell of the clean bedding, and that will keep their odor down. And not but not least, make sure you do ferret hygiene once a week, and that will keep the odor down from their ears. Ferrets do require medical care, the same as your dog and your cat, you need to take them to the vet at least once a year, get a medistemper shot, coz their very prone to canine distemper. And canine distemper can be track into your house from the sole of your shoes. They also need their rabies shots, because if your ferret bite somebody, you don’t wanna have to go to the heartache of losing your ferret because it bit somebody. So make sure you take your ferret in every year. Get them check from any obvious illness, and get their shots done. Ferrets do have medical issues, there are some that are very common and specific to ferrets, one of those diseases is called Insulinoma. Insulinoma is the abnormal development of cells in the pancreas that cause an over production of insulin. It’s the opposite of diabetes in a human. In a ferret, the glucose drops very low and they become lethargic and unable to play. Ferrets have a tendency to develop insulinoma if you feed them too many sugars and carbohydrates and that’s one of the reasons that we try and stay with the high protein, high fat, low carbohydrate, low sugar diet, so we don’t promote the insulinoma. Another common illness of ferrets is adrenal disease. Adrenal disease is characterized by hair loss, loss of muscle mass, and occasionally aggression and itchy skin. I have two ferrets here, this one is just starting to show signs of adrenal disease. And you can see that he’s starting to lose his hair and he did get a little bit aggressive with his cage mate. He was treated with luprone and he’s gonna go in for surgery to get his adrenal gland removed. The most extreme cases of adrenal disease are like this little girl here, her name is Shasta, and she has severe adrenal disease. She went in for surgery but unfortunately it was unoperable, and she was not expected to live quite as long as she has, but she’s doing very well, a bit hairless. But her disposition is good, she gets her luprone, her appetites good, and she really is an active healthy ferret, other than having no hair. Other diseases that ferrets get are infections, much like humans get infection. This little ferret here has an infection of her sinuses, and you can see the little bump on top of her head, she’s been getting antibiotic, injectible antibiotics to take care of that little infection that she has. Ferrets get pneumonia, just like people, they require antibiotic. You’ll know if your ferrets coughing a lot or having trouble breathing. Ferrets also develop a lot of GI problems, inflammatory bowel disease from bad diet. So keep that high protein, high fat diet available at all times. Common signs and symptoms to look for with your ferret, if you think your ferret might be sick, is the abnormal stools. Are they eating okay? Are they drinking okay? Are they passing their water? And that you can tell by every time you clean the litter pan. If the litter pan is dry, then they haven’t passed their water. You check their level of energy, if they are a ferret that habitually playful and all of a sudden they’re lethargic and sprawled out flat, then you know that there’s something wrong. At the first sign of illness you need to take your ferrets to the vet, coz ferrets have a high metabolic rate and they can get sick very, very quick. Other things can happen to the ferret such as accidents, we touch briefly on some of those things with ferret proofing like don’t step on your ferret, don’t get her caught on a refrigerator door. Buffy came here a perfectly normal ferret, using all four legs, we’re not quite sure what happened to her, but she ended up having back leg weakeness. So we went out and get Buffy a wheel chair, so that she could have a good quality of life and still explore the rescue. And she’s quite good with her wheel chair, she loves to roll around and check out other people’s cages. You need to know that every ferret, you can expect at least one major medical bill. And that will usually run you anywhere from 500 to 1500 dollars, during the life of the ferret. Ferrets are wonderful and entertaining pets, we’ve given you some good information to help you start caring for your ferret. I encourage you to search the internet and to read a couple of books that will also help you learn more about ferrets. I hope you enjoy yours as much as I enjoy mine, thank you for watching us.