My first ferret came along in the 50's, at the time I did not know what it
was but some of the guys who had allotments told me to feed it on bread
and milk.  At the time of getting this new animal, I could not find any
information about it what so ever.  In the late 60's, early 70's I was
given a small white animal which turned out to be a ferret, still little
or no information could be found about them in the UK.
 
At this time most owners of ferrets used them to catch rabbits and very
few people in the UK kept them as pets, fewer still kept them as house
pets, I found that the people who were trying to tell me how to keep
ferrets still fed their ferrets on bread soaked in milk, the ferrets
would get the rabbit guts and the odd road kill.
 
I started to write articles on ferrets, from my own experience for a
magazine, I noted how jills would come into season then go out and come
in and out again at a later stage.  Keeping my ferrets indoors at this
time I could keep a note on all my ferrets, treating each as an individual
and not just as one of a specie.  The people who worked ferrets would tell
me that unmated jills would die.
 
Some years ago I meet some one with experience of Fitch farming and he had
come to the same conclusion that death of jills was down to bad husbandry
as it did not happen on Fitch farms.
 
[TM]
[Posted in FML issue 3725]