I bred ferrets from 1981-1993. My outlier, a hob, was born in 1991, altered at 8 months, died in 2010. I used to have to counsel people that they were bringing home a pet with the same lifespan as most cats and dogs, they were long term pets. That isn't true now.
-
-
Show this thread
-
What happened? Marshall Farms. They breed ferrets for science and they started dumping their excess into the pet trade in the early 90s. Baby ferrets, 5-6 weeks old, altered and descented. The ferret boom happened very fast because baby ferrets are the most adorable critters.
Show this thread -
A lot of them got dumped because even "descented" ferrets still smell, and ferrets are HYPER and require a lot of room or play time and enrichment or they become BITEY LITTLE SHITHEADS. But they became fad pets, they were seen as money makers, and backyard mills showed up.
Show this thread -
People grabbed fur-farm rejects for cheap and began breeding and then inbreeding for colour. The entire body and headshape of domestic ferrets changed in less than a decade. It became the norm to alter and descent them at STUPIDLY EARLY AGES. And we began to see problems.
Show this thread -
Adrenal disease is now common, lymphoma is now common. If you buy a ferret from a pet store, you're almost certain to hit one of those two uglies by age 5. We knew that in the 90s but it was cheaper to buy an already altered/descented ferret for $99 from Big Box stores..
Show this thread -
Especially since they were tiny and cute at 6 weeks of age, than to buy one from an ethical breeder that was 12-15 weeks of age and have to pay $125 on top of that price to have it altered. Think about it. By 6 weeks of age, they'd already gone through surgery and anaesthesia.
Show this thread -
If it was a cat or dog, people would be up in arms. Nobody cared that this was done to baby ferrets, who don't even start to wean until they're about 4 weeks old, don't have full teeth until they're 7-8 weeks old, and aren't independent until 3-4 months.
Show this thread -
Mill breeders were inbreeding and chain breeding and selling ferrets for $75-80 to compete with the $99 Big Box Pet Stores. Because you could buy fur farm rejects for about $30, at the time. Which were already inbred. Buy 'em cheap, breed 'em til they died, sell babies.
Show this thread -
Ethical breeders stopped breeding. Ferrets are not cheap animals to raise, and that was before people had to start budgeting for long-term veterinary care. A lot of the ethical breeders now have European lines because most of the American breedlines died out and what was left..
Show this thread -
Were the descendants of the fur farms and fur farm rejects. They weren't bred for health or temperment, they were almost exclusively bred to get babies on the market, or for color morphs/albinism. If your foundation breedline comes from an already inbred line.. problems.
Show this thread -
As an ethical breeder, I had necropsies done regularly. I necropsied every animal that died young, even after they were sold. It was in my sales contract that if the ferret died before age 10, I'd pay for the necropsy because I wanted to know WHY.
Show this thread -
#1 cause of death? Owners feeding garbage food and not a high-protein/low-carb diet. #2 cause of death was foreign body ingestion. I saw two cases of lymphoma, both times adult-onset at around 6 years of age, and they were littermates. Saw 1 case of adrenal disease.
Show this thread -
And the adrenal had an owner who left lights on for the ferret 24/7 because she thought the ferret was afraid of the dark. A couple died from Giardia, that didn't come out of my cages - I had fecals run every year on my breeders and on babies prior to sale.
Show this thread -
One died of influenza it caught from its owner, one died from parvo it caught from the owner's new puppy that also died of parvo. After I stopped breeding, I did ferret rescue for about a decade and it broke my damn heart.
Show this thread -
Almost every single rescue died from insulinoma, lymphoma, or adrenal disease. I had one that died from a seizure for no known reason the vet could find. Every single rescue was either a fur farm purchase or a Big Box pet store purchase.
Show this thread -
I stopped doing rescues because .. this was the new "normal" and I just couldn't go from having a decade be an early death to having 5 years be considered 'long lived', or 'the age when you can expect a serious health problem and long, slow decline'.
Show this thread -
Anyway. There's my rant about ferrets. I hate what's happened to them. I hate that this is the new "normal" and that most people don't know this isn't and shouldn't be normal for this animal. /end
Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.