our ferrets health

Question
Our ferret ( Shadow) is alittle over 7 yrs. old. For the last month or so she has started messing her cage. She is very smart and never had any problems messing outside her litter pan before. Her cage is three levels and she is going all over the cage. We clean her litter pan a cage a few times a day. Over the years nothing has changed in our care and handling on Shadow. She is very healthy and very playful. Everything seems fine except this one issue. Some days everything is fine, she uses her litter pan. But, other days she will use her litter pan and she will also mess all through her cage. We also spoke to our local vet and she admits she knows very little about ferrets. We will be grateful you could help us . Thank you , Joe Doyle

Answer
I'm sorry your fuzzbutts are giving you a hard time!  I assume you mean litterbox training INSIDE the cage; this is much easier to do than training them to poop in a litterbox when they come OUT to play (mine never have 100% accuracy!).


If you're using a triangular litter box, I want you to stop using it and get a small cat litter pan.  My ferrets won't use those corner pans...they won't poop anywhere that they can't fit their whole bodies in to.   Next, put some fresh poop in there...try to always keep relatively fresh poop in the otherwise clean box just to remind the ferrets THIS IS A POTTY.  

But how do you say THIS IS NOT A POTTY?

Easy, you say either THIS IS A SLEEP AREA or THIS IS A FOOD AREA.  What I've done on the floor on my ferrets' cage is this: I have a medium sized cat box on one side, plush towels covering the rest of the floor space, and food bowls hanging from the other side of the cage.  They have three hammocks that they must climb up to using the side of the cage...no levels for them.  It isn't hard with the kind of cage I use, plus it helps build muscle strength in their shoulders.

So, to review:

1. Get rid of your levels!

2. Your cage floor will have a CAT litter-box, food bowl, water bowl or water bottle, and a blanket.  Thats it.  Leave NO EXTRA ROOM.

3. Arrange hammocks or sleepy-sacks at different heights throughout the cage.

Get back to me of you need to, and good luck!

Stephenie