As you know we're always looking at improving our knowledge and how we raise our babies here at Whimsical Kismet,the biggest change most recently being that we have adapted and added Avidog and Puppy Culture protocols to ferret development stages. Now we've got some experience of the difference this has made to our kits I thought I'd share it with you all. What got me thinking about this is I was looking on facebook and seeing all the normal baby animal problems, biting, toilet issues, etc and then saw one with a kit showing extreme food aggression, to the extent he was attacking his cage mate and barking at his owner. I was then surprised to see he came from a well respected breeder that I know breeds good ferrets, whose response was to laugh it off, sometimes they’re like that, his sisters like that we just deal with it. I couldn’t help thinking, thank goodness we do the ERS when they’re young to stop things like this. That got me thinking what else would other people brush off that we would see as something to be worked on?
So, we’ve now raised 6 litters and a few brought in kits of differing ages with our PC and avidog inspired protocols on top of the ones we’ve been doing for years. We’ve seen some improvements like;
Better food manners/less micro aggression at feeding time
More resilience in kits and ferrets
Ferrets who teach themselves to take a break when needed
Better carrier etiquette
Improved litter skills
More confidence when in unfamiliar surroundings
Faster training/socializing
Better sociability with other ferrets
a lot more physical expression of emotions, especially happiness and excitement
Less likely to develop bad habits (cage rattling etc)
More likely to look for interactive training
Instigating interactions or responses with the humans without physical contact
Some of these you’re probably thinking; so what, they’re pets why do they need that? Well the answer is they don’t need it but it does make things easier for you as an owner and for them in how they navigate the world. What we’ve seen is a positive change to more emotionally evolved ferrets. Ferrets who understand their owners wants and needs better, who understand how to interact with other ferret better and who are eager to please all around and minimise the general stress levels in the house. Basically, we’ve went from well raised ferret kits to good citizen ferrets not by changing our lines but by changing our focus in training and improving our socialization based on how their brains work and timing rather than ticking a box or flooding.
This is all especially important as we add more EU lines to our program. These animals being more intelligent but also more likely to stress out or become bored and destructive. Raising our hybrids with these protocols seems to result in a more domestic mentality like that of a ferret while retaining everything that makes hybrids so special. This makes them better pets and easier for the less experienced. Heck our first hybrids raised this way were out working in our PR team with the public by 4 months old! I know people who don’t let anyone else handle their hybrids in case of a nip.
What’s really startling is these are things you would be looking for when looking at a potential service dog. Confidence, eager to please, well trained, and in some service dogs an ability to decide the appropriate reaction to have to a stimulus based on what they have observed. This is truly next level stuff and I’m really shocked and impressed with it.
I’m also really optimistic for the future of these ferrets. We could potentially see better longevity as we see ferrets whose instinct is to ignore or defuse a stressful situation reach old age. We might see ferrets less likely to develop health problems, we all know stress makes us sick. We might even see ferrets who try to tell us they’re not feeling well rather than trying to hide it, giving precious time to figure out what’s wrong. Only time will tell if these predictions could prove to be true but I am so hopeful. Our goal has always been to have our babies with us as long as possible, as healthy as possible.
Looking forward to continuing to improve in our next litters as we become more practiced and start breeding from our jills from these litters and seeing how our predictions go as they age
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