Minimizing Stress During Pet Ferret Travel

"Hi there! I'm Fran Friedman from Morning Star Animal Sanctuary and I am here to talk to you about stress on ferrets when traveling on behalf of expertvillage.com. Ferrets run around like they really haven't got a care in the world and if the truth be known, they do not handle stress well. If you are traveling with your ferret and you've done everything right, you have food for them every 4 hours, you have fresh water available, the temperature is good and you've got them in a large enough cage where they have a nice little box, blankets and maybe a little friend with them, you could still have the problem of stress. Ferrets do get stressed when they aren't in their own environment or when they are separated from their owners. Traveling definitely falls into that category of not being in their own environment. Try to bring as many familiar blankets and toys and don't wash them before you leave. Make sure that they smell just like their surroundings. You can always wash them when you get home. The first sign of stress in ferrets is diarrhea that is loose and is dark and that is definitely a sign of stress and sometimes means there is blood in the stool. It doesn't take much for a ferret to show those signs. Also if they are not eating while you are traveling and not drinking, they can dehydrate very quickly. Definitely make sure that you have food, water that is familiar to them. Some times you fill your water bottles with water from your own house that you have enough that the water in new places taste a little strange and they stop drinking. That is some of the things that you can do for stress when traveling."