If you’ve been bitten by the bug of caring for a ferret you might find it difficult to resist the notion of bringing more ferrets into the home. What do you need to consider before you go ahead with bringing another ferret into your life?
What Do I Need To Know Before Adding Another Ferret to The Home?
Ferrets can, under certain circumstances, live together happily. Understanding those circumstances is the key to developing happy ferret relationships.
Social living, between ferrets, is generally considered to be a lot more likely to succeed if all the ferrets are neutered or spayed. This will stop the potential for breeding and territory competition. Unneutered male ferrets, well, they simply don’t get on. There’ll be too much competition for dominance.
Of course, there are advantages to having more than one ferret around the home. Most importantly, they’ll stop any loneliness from occurring. You will need to take steps to make sure they can exist together, peacefully- particularly over the first few days.
What About The First Few Days At Home?
The first few days are vital, when it comes to socializing two or more ferrets. You can’t just dive in at the deep end, placing them together. There’s an important step that needs to be completed first.
For the first few days the two ferrets will need to be housed separately, as they will immediately sense that the other ferret is unfamiliar. For this reason, you have to introduce them to each other over a period of time.
Keep them in separate cages, placing them next to each other, at first. Don’t worry if they hiss at each other. While unpleasant this is the ferret’s natural reaction to an unfamiliar counterpart. Over time this should stop.
It’s a good idea, at this stage, to start mixing up their scents. One of the ways of doing this is to mix up their bedding.
What Should I look Out For After That?
As your ferrets become more and more familiar with each other, you can start to introduce them to each other more directly. But, even at this stage, there are things you’ll need to consider to make the process a success.
Introduce them in short bursts to begin with, keeping the situation under control. Leashes on the ferrets, with the appropriate harnesses, will help you to keep the situation under control.
Over time you’ll find they start to accept each other more, allowing you to put them together for longer, under less direct control. Don’t leave them together unsupervised until you are totally confident they are happy with each other, which will be down to increased familiarity over time.
Watch out for any rough play, which will need intervention from the owner to rectify and prevent. Young ferrets are particularly likely to engage in rough play and biting behavior.
