Bringing Home Your Pet Ferret

Video Transcript

" Hi there! My name is Fran Freedman, I’m here with Morning Starr Animal Sanctuary, and I’m to tell you about preparation for bringing your ferret home on behalf of expertvillage.com. The first thing you have to after you’ve done your research and you know that this is the pet and you’ve been approved by a proper organization is to purchase a cage a proper size. If you have 2 ferrets, a cage of this size is perfect. They have lots of room to play. They usually sleep 15-18 hours a day, so you have to have plenty of hammocks in the cage. Those cost approximately 20 dollars a piece most of the time; they like lots of those. They love little bags and blankets to curl up in. A lot of things for ferrets, you can even get them on EBay sometimes. Make sure your water bowls are the kind that hook onto the cages, as ferrets don’t like anything against the wall. All litter boxes must be tied and locked into the wall of the cage, thus the ferret will dump it and play with it and just get into all kinds of trouble. Cages will probably run you 200 dollars and up. Bowls like this will cost about 20 dollars. They come with little ladders for them to get from place to place. We like to add to them so they don’t get their little feet caught. Make sure your ferret home for your ferrets is safe. If there is something about it that you’re not sure, if they’re sliding on plastic, we go to carpet stores and get little samples of carpets and they go on there so they can have a little bit of traction. They’re good because if the ferret does make a mistake out of the litter box, which does happen, you can always just throw it away and go back and get another one. Ferrets like to have varieties of food, so you’ll have to have food already ready for when you bring your ferret home. Toys for ferrets are definitely good to have before you bring your ferret home. Sometimes you can ask what they have been playing with and what they enjoy. Some ferrets like plastic toys, some like fuzzy toys, and they definitely have their preference. If they’re only playing with fluffy toys and you put them all in there, they’ll put them all in a spot and play with them. But if they have been playing with fluffy and you buy them plastic, they will sometimes just ignore them. Find out what they have been playing with and what they enjoy. Just as kind of a side note, you can pick up a lot of toys for ferrets at garage sales that were baby toys. They like toys that make noise. I have a lot that hang on the cages, and I pull the strings during the day and they hear the noise. Noise stimulates ferrets and they love the toys. These little toys here, I make them for them out of Easter eggs crochet around them; they are the favorites. I put pasta inside so that they’re safe, so if they ever did break them open they would just be pasta in there and nothing they can hurt themselves on. "