About Us
Who Are We
We are a mother/daughter team here at whimsical kismet ferretry. Liz is the bread winner/mother and Laura, who cannot work due to ill health, has the job of keeping the pets happy and healthy. We live in Fife, Scotland, in the countryside. Apart from our ferrets we spend our time reading, being outdoors in our beautiful surroundings, gardening and spending time with our other pets, including dogs, cats, rabbits and birds. We are very much part of the countryside and urban living just isn’t for us.
Our mission statement:
As ferret breeders we want to be part of the solution to the increasing concern of ferrets health, welfare and numbers in rescue. To do so our mission is 2 fold;
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to inform ferret owners from novice to experienced of ferret welfare, including raising expectations of what people should expect from their breeder
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to raise ferrets that excel at life
Our specific goals for angora lines are on our angora page
Our first statement seems to have went well over the years. How do we do this? By setting a good example and trying to keep our prices down while not cutting any corners so that it one day becomes the norm for kits to leave at or after 8 weeks, wormed and flea treated at least. We also hope that our blog posts concerning welfare and health help people know what to look for and ask a potential breeder. Sharing information to improve the expectations we hope will once day lead to fewer people trying to breed for money, or without any interest to the kits wellbeing.
Our second statement is a bit more specific. What do we mean by excel at life? We only breed to keep and improve our lines. We want our kits to have longevity and good health all their lives. We want them to be comfortable in any situation, and for them to be well behaved and happy handled, with an even-tempered personality. No matter if this ferret is to be a beloved pet, a worker or a Public Relations ferret we want them to take it in stride, enjoy themselves and break a few hearts with their beautiful nature. Above all this is what we’re wanting from our kits and what we put into their rearing, no matter their colour or breeding.
We emphasise a good diet and husbandry, including mental stimulation, to promote health, and put a lot of time, effort and money into developing and improving a socialisation and experience protocol to improve mental health, social skills and build confidence and flexibility in our kits. So, novelty is fun, they can be themselves in any situation, they know how to interact with other ferrets, pets and humans, and if they’re out and get a fright they have the confidence to put it behind them and not get scared or aggressive. In all we want them to be the best of the best, true stand outs in any field.
Our Ferret Journey
We first encountered ferrets when Laura was in Primary school when our neighbour got a pair of brothers to work, though Liz had seen some as a child herself that were very nippy and smelly, that had coloured her thoughts on them for her whole life. Laura, the animal lover, went to meet them and never having encountered an animal like them before wasn’t sure of them. When she got back home and tried to say this what came out was “can I get a ferret” and her father took her to pick up two from Fife ferret rescue (now closed). The jill had been in the rescue for a while, never finding someone she didn’t want to bite, and the boy had been in and out a number of times always being returned within a few weeks. They took to Laura like they had been waiting for her and we like to think they were.
It’s this fate/chance encounter which our ferretry name comes from
Eventually Laura decided to breed Jess to Tony, next door, raising by herself with support from the family. Jess was a proud mother and did an amazing job with her litter. Her incredible bond with Laura taught us a lot more about raising a litter than the books ever could and has resulted in a fundamentally different method to raising kits than any text books told us, methods brought forward to this day. The family decided to kept back our own Spice-Weasel and Gizmo from the litter. As the years went on we got more ferrets and although we decided not to continue this original line for a few reasons our boy Thomas, who we originally got to breed with Gizmo, is a cornerstone of our lines. Some time over the years Liz lost her wariness of ferrets and welcomed them into her heart, always supportive of Laura she eventually became her breeding partner.
We had actually only had ferrets for a week or so when we went to our first show (poor Dylan thought he was going back again!). We didn’t take anything home (except a few toys) but it was certainly a good way to catch the ferret bug. We find it hard to make them due to transport and health but we love to show off our beautiful babies, and meet other ferret people, often bringing home a rosette. It’s always nice to see the effort and love shining through so well that others can see it too. We even take them to events to meet the public. Good publicity for ferrets and another way to show off their beautiful personalities.
First getting into ferrets via a game keeper we have always used our ferrets working, especially after getting our border terrier pup Tammie. Though they have always been pets first and foremost we always have a worker in the business, but we strongly believe a worker should always be trained and cared for as well as a pet.
Combining her interests in health, husbandry, behaviour, development and land management, Laura went on to do a hons degree in animal biology before becoming unwell. She has turned all this to becoming a better pet owner and breeder. We have also kept abreast of information in ferrets and other animals, and other things that may be of interest to our breeding program, such as elements of the avidog program. Working together we can safely say we do all we can to raise kits to the highest standard.
The Ferret Manor
Our ferrets are fed raw, though kits have a more ranging diet, some of which we raise ourselves. This gives us the knowledge that it lived a good life, a sentiment that can be shared with game that we catch or buy in. Our livestock is kept as pets and our ferrets are raised used to them being around and our hands smelling of them, though they’re kept at a distance for obvious reasons. We also have other pets which our ferrets can interact with i.e. our cats and especially our dogs who our working ferrets work with as a team.
Aside from the exception of any ferrets with age or medical needs that are required to be alone or inside, our ferrets are housed outdoors in large, secure specially made "hutches". Our boys enclosure is a large multi-hutch set up inside the ferret shed (a secure, windowed, wooden garage with ventilation sometimes used for playtime in wet weather) that can be partitioned or left open allowing us to separate higher and lower energy ferrets or have everyone in together, with enough room for everyone to get away from each other and have their own space, as well as plenty room for playtime.
[It is important that they do get light, fresh air and are able to keep warm so please make sure if you go down the ferret shed route you have good lighting, vents and your sheds are free of drafts and damp. You may need to replace the floor with a better quality one, secure the windows better and check the walls for gaps or knots that can be pushed out, remember ferrets are escape artists and can disappear in seconds if they want to. Please also be aware of what you keep in a ferret shed. We only store ferret toys and bedding in ours. Machinery, oils, petrols or paints, herbicides and pesticides, garden tools, or exhaust fumes in a garage are all dangerous to your pet. Like all housing a ferret shed needs to be maintained and checked regularly for areas of wear, damp, mold etc to keep your pet safe and secure]
The girls enclosure looks smaller but is actually larger (excusing the actual shed), being based on an idea to have a run section inside the cage and giving them the space of a shed in a mobile area. It is a multi level space larger than many sheds with bedding and play areas, and a grassed bottom section. Like the boys enclosure it has multiple beds, litter trays and water and food areas to allow for them to have their own space, and can be split though this is generally only used to make cleaning time safer. Having everyone outside with no heating and limited electronic lighting allows them to be exposed to natural light cycles and climates (though we draw the line at wind and rain getting in there!) which allows for weather appropriate coats and healthier season cycles.
On top of this we have our nursery block, small hospital hutches for those in need of cage rest or quarantine and our run, situated in a large ferret proofed area of garden, additionally we have a large outdoors hutch that can be split into two, two indoor cages for kits or visitors and a pen for PR handling events. This allows for us to be able to separate anyone who need it and adapt to any eventuality, be it someone needing to come inside with age or someone needing housed alone for a day to a few weeks after being at the vets, or someone coming from outside the ferretry who needs quarantined, long or short term. In the winter when the weather is very bad the girls are moved into the shed too, keeping everyone warm and dry. They have lots of toys including balls and tunnels, beds of different types and hammocks etc, as well as run time with yet more toys and lots of fuss and cuddles. Ferrets need dry, draft free beds and we find having a few throughout the hutch allows them to have “me time” if needed, though they often all pile into one big hammock at nap time.
In the summer they get small pools and sprinklers in the run, they can often be found in a heap in a cool, just in the sun corner of the hutch enjoying the sun and still sleeping together despite the heat. In the winter they get extra thick bedding and frequent checks on the water bottles and covers that everyone is dry, out of the wind and has access to water. Although both extremes can be dangerous they cope better with winter lows snuggling up in bed than summer highs so we often pour water or wet towels over the hutches and have cool blocks placed in strategic places, changed through out the day in the hottest days. Heat is especially dangerous for dark coated ferrets who may need an extra eye kept on them, light ferrets are more at risk of sunburn however so regular checks and cages out of direct sunlight, or with shaded sections are important.
As a rule our hobs live together full time, and our jills live in big groups with our hoblets full time. Jills who are to have kits and nursing mums live separately in specially built housing. More information on our kit housing is available in the how we raise our kits section. We also have smaller hutches as hospital cages, for after operations or if we need to keep a closer eye on someone, and a plastic hutch for quarantine that is especially easy to disinfect.
