Well-Being

Ferrets, being naturally playful, outgoing, and intelligent, can easily get bored in their environments. Leading to depression or destructive behaviours. To prevent this, it’s crucial to provide a variety of enriching activities and toys in your ferrets’ space and regularly switch them out to keep things fresh and exciting. Ideally, you should alternate enrichment activities and toys every week to prevent boredom. This does not mean you constantly need to buy a surplus of toys (although it can be tempting). But instead, keep some toys aside and switch them out. Making their play area new, fun and exciting! ...

Ferrets are highly social animals and thrive with companionship. This post will explore why ferrets need friends and the benefits of having more than 1 ferret. It will also address lone ferrets. Why ferrets need other ferrets It’s a common misconception that lone ferrets can ‘be fine’ on their own, exceptional circumstances notwithstanding. All ferrets should be able to have other ferret friends. It’s important to keep ferrets in at least pairs or more. ...

Ferrets display a wide variety of behaviours. From pouncing and digging to the famous ‘weasel war dance’ this blog post will run through some of the most common ferret behaviours and why they do them! I have organised these behaviours into 8 separate categories. Playful Behaviours War dancing Also referred to as the ‘weasel war dance’. It’s a series of jumps, hops, twists and dooking which normally result in invitations to play, chase or capture a toy. Ferrets will war dance at you or other ferrets, it’s a sign they’re very excited! In the wild, ferrets war dance to confuse their prey or other predatory species. ...

Ferrets make many noises, from happy dook-dooking to huffing. This blog post will highlight some common ferret sounds and their meanings! Dooking Dooking is probably the most well-known ferret vocalisation. It often sounds like a soft and repetitive ‘clucking’ sound, which can vary in pitch. Ferrets mostly dook when they’re happy. But there are actually multiple types of ferret dooking! Such as: Happy dooks. The most commonly known sound, ferrets will dook when feeling happy, playful or excited. Some ferrets don’t dook — this doesn’t mean they’re unhappy, it could just mean they were never taught how to dook! ...

‘Are ferrets smelly?’, ‘Don’t ferrets stink?’. While it’s true, ferrets do smell — like ferrets, all animals have a smell. Ferrets, however, get a terrible reputation for being stinky. So, what makes odeur de furet? Why are they stigmatised for having a bad smell? Well, ferrets have a natural musky odour because of their scent glands. Scent glands are situated throughout the whole body. But are primarily in the anal area, which they use for marking. ...