Deafness

Question
I just got a new ferret. He is very young and I think he is deaf. He has red/pink eyes. He has a brown body with a white and brown head. He doesn't seem to respond to sound. Is he deaf?? If he is deaf how do I train him not to bite and come and other stuff like that??

Answer
A good way to test to see if your ferret is deaf is to go up to him when he is sleeping and shake a bag of pennies, clap your hands, turn on the vacuum. Just try not to make any vibrations and see if your ferret wakes up.

From your brief description it sounds like he could be deaf from his coat color. Deafness is linked to certain coat colors and markings by a genetic defect called Waardenburg syndrome, which causes deafness. An estimated 75% of ferrets that have a strip of white down the head and many times a white bib under their head (badger, or blaze) and ferrets that have a white face and bib (panda marking) are deaf.

When he bites just scruff him and drag him gently across the floor. You don't need to make noise to train him out of nipping.

Just be consistent though.

I'll be honest, none of my ferrets come and I've never taught them to. But I do use a squeaker toy to round them up when it's time for them to go back into their cage. So for a deaf ferret I have heard of a lot of people using a light, such as a laser pointer or flashing toy to train their deaf ferret to come to that. A good thing for you to do is to find his favorite hiding places and just look there because deaf ferrets sleep like the dead and can be hard to find sometimes.

Here are some of the best sites to get ferret info from.
http://www.petshub.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=15
http://pets-galore.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=673
http://www.everythingfert.proboards36.com/index.cgi
http://www.ferretvillage.org/index.php?sid=c833a8c4485d71cfb75023729231c871

I highly recommend going to these.

Good luck and I hoped this helped!
Lindsey