How to Take Care of a Ferret - Cage and Housing Requirements

I’m Robin, from Ferrets First Rescue, teaching you how to take care of your ferret. Now we’re gonna teach you how to prepare a home for your ferret. As you can see, there are variety of cages available, there’s the wire base cage, there is the super pet cage with plastic shelves and there's also the Ferret Nations at the back. The Ferret Nations have become one of the most popular design cages because the doors open up to allow easy access. Lots of people though buy this cage here because it affords their ferrets a variety of shelving and tubing and things like that. The most important thing to remember is you need enough room in the cage to house a ferret. This cage would house two ferrets, this cage would house two ferrets, you need something larger for more than two ferrets. The drawbacks to a cage like this, with wire shelvings, that the wire shelving will hurt the ferret’s feet. It’s important that if you get a cage like this that you keep this shelves covered either with some sort of bedding, maybe t-shirts or cut a piece of linoleum to fit over the wire shelf. All of these cages afford room so that we can hang hammocks in the cage or put sack in the cage, coz they like that kind of bedding. They’re historically borrowing animals so they like the opportunity to crawl down inside things and hide. And if you have a pocket hammy, then they’ll crawl down in there and sleep, then the same thing goes for a sack, they can crawl right in there. So it’s important to put some bedding in the cage, maybe line the bottom with t-shirts that they can crawl under, have a hammy in there that they can hide in and a sack. Water bowls should be the type that attach to the cage, this is an example of one type, you have a lock onto the cage so that your ferret can't take it and dump the bowl, which they love to do. Another type of feeder is the bin feeder, that attaches on to the cage and you can fill it just by opening up the top. The third kind of locking crack is this type, it has an screw on bag, you put it between the bars and then you screw it in place. The ferret should have a water bottle that is large enough to hold at least 24 hours worth of water and should always be filled. When you place the water bottle on the cage, it should be placed at the height that the ferret can usually get to it. He shouldn’t be laying on the floor to try and drink his water nor she have to reach too high. This type of bottle is particularly nice because it has a wide mouth, it’s easy to clean and easy to fill. Litter pans is mentioned before, should be square, and the litter that the ferrets should be given should be a newspaper or pellet consistency. This happens to be newspaper pellets and you can get pine pellets, or you can get something called sweet scoop. But what you don’t wanna use is cat litter, coz cat litter’s made of clay and ferrets being burrowing animal will burrow into that clay, it will get up their nose and it will harden there. The other thing that’s important for the litter pan is the clip, you wanna take the clip and attach the pan to the cage, otherwise, your ferret will take great pleasure in dumping it. This will hold it in place, you just disconnect this, scoop it, put it back again and clamp it. Okay, now where to locate your cage, you should keep your cage in a room that does not get too much direct light. Ferrets are burrowing animals, they come out of their burrow at dusk and at dawn, so they are expose to minimal light. If you live in an area that has no complete darkness, it has a lot of ambient light at night, it’s a good idea to cover your cage, and that will provide them with the absolute darkness that they need. Now, about the play area, ferrets need 2-3 hours of play a day, but they need to play in a very safe area. And it’s important that you look at your room carefully and make sure that it’s ferret proof. You wanna make sure that there are no openings that the ferret can climb into, you need to remember that if they can get their head through a hole, they can get the rest of their body through a hole. Make sure that there’s no cabinets that they get into, get into toxic substances or get into drain holes. Make sure there’s no overhang of your cabinets that they climb up and under, put something, a board or any type of material to block them from getting between the refrigerator and the wall or to block them from getting under the refrigerator. Be very careful with things like opening of refrigerator door, ferrets are very curious, the minute you open that door they gonna wanna put their head in there and look, and you’re gonna shut the door and their head will be in there, so you have to be careful of that sort of thing, of opening ovens, of dishwashers, dryers, anything that could possibly hurt your ferret. You wanna make sure that your ferret proof area is clear of any type of clothing or material on the floor, coz you’ll never know when the ferrets gonna go and hide in that material, or that piece of clothing, and you’re gonna walk through the room and trample on it, it’s been done by almost everyone. You’re gonna wanna make sure that there’s no type of latex toys or little beads or anything small enough that a ferret can pick up and swallow or can chew apart, and they love to chew apart latex. They’ll eat it, and it will cause a blockage for them. So you need to make sure that the area is clear of all of that type of stuff. And next, we’ll talk about ferret toys.