Ferrets smell. That is a fact and at this time of the year it is particularly obvious. Not all ferrets smell as bad, in fact angora ferrets smell particularly less pongy, and the smell is not as repugnant to everyone but even someone who enjoys a ferret’s musk can be overwhelmed if it gets too strong, never mind family, friends or neighbours who may not be as comfortable with the smell in the first place. So, here is our tips to beating the pong
Before we begin, I am going to be specifically talking about ferret musk, not the smell of poo and urine. Ferrets naturally use latrines so even if your ferret is not litter trained you should be daily removing the soiled substrate in the latrine and replacing it. That is enough to keep your ferret clean from that point of view.
1 diet; quite often a ferret fed kibble, or a wet food diet smell more than a ferret fed raw. You can also smell a difference in the smell. I am not sure how to describe it, a kibble fed ferret smells like ferret and oxidised oils and wet food left out in the sun. You would really have to experience the difference to know it. It is worth noting some foods make them smell worse for the day, but I think that can be put down to the poo which should be cleaned up at least once a day anyway.
2 regular cleaning; the part of a ferret that smells is the oil that gives them that yellowy look at this time of year. That oil gets on everything and it sticks. Regularly cleaning bedding, 1/2x a week should suffice, removes that oil (this is also why angoras do not smell as much. It also allows the excess oils to come off the ferrets onto the bedding. This is a much better way of removing the oils than a bath because it does not dry out the skin nor remove all the oil, both of which would ultimately just increase the oil production.
The oil also builds up on the walls, in heavy duty areas it can leave a brownish residue, this can be removed with a little pet safe disinfectant and elbow grease. We would recommend odourfresh which is an all purpose kennel disinfectant. Not only does it kill everything from the common cold to fleas and mould it is also suitable for popping in the washing machine with your ferrets bedding and giving the bowls a quick clean with before fresh food is put in. It also smells amazing, we use it in the house too lol
3 DO NOT BATH; as already mentioned it will make things worse but if you have a particularly greasy hob and clean bedding isn’t removing the oil fast enough there are some options. You can create a dig box with pasta, rice or substrate. The acts of digging, rolling and rubbing himself in the dig box will remove his oils. The more he tries to mark the dig box as his and get his oils on there the ore oil he should rub off himself. You can also try swimming in water only or oatmeal water. This is purely to remove the excess oils and mostly works when they come out, when they will then wipe all the loose oil off on basically anything they come into contact with.
4 neutering; the smells increase because of hormone changes. Boys in particular stink the whole summer because they’re in season the whole summer but I would say a jill in season smells even worse than a hob. You can avoid that quite simply by spaying, castrating or implanting your ferrets, though obviously you would have to consider the pros and cons of doing so health and finance wise
5 supplements? This is something I think only we do, and I have talked about it in a blog post before. If you’ve looked at our pictures for our adults, you may have noticed the water bottles are green. That is because we have put chlorophyll liquid in our water. We kind of stumbled onto this in a bit of a eureka moment. Have you heard of bitch tablets? These are given to in heat females to make them smell less attractive to boys and help avoid a line of suitors every time you leave the house. They are still able to mate however so do not use it as some kind of contraception. The chlorophyll simply reduces or absorbs the scent. I have tried to research why but cannot find the science, perhaps it has not even been done. After all there’s not much practical use from a pharmaceutical point of view.
When we had to have a jill in season housed in the shed with my boys we thought “I wish there was a way to mask her smell” which brought us to bitches in season and eh, why not give it a try? It worked wonders. So, we thought why not try the boys, see if it’ll make them turn white again? Again, it reduced the smell exponentially on the smell, though not the colour. The chlorophyll can give the poo a greenish tinge though so bare that in mind if you are worried about them being ill.
If you do choose to try the chlorophyll be prepared to follow it through. We once made the mistake to stop feeding it and not only did the smell increase again (not really an issue but we had acclimated to the lower level) but the boys were so keen to be their rankest self’s they then started rolling in the litter trays getting poo all over and yuck! 1000x worse than a greasy boy, a poo covered greasy boy
I hope this can help someone, and feel free to pass it along to any friends who may need an idea or two to reduce the smell
Bye for now xx