Here in the UK we have three or four types of people who breed ferrets.
 
1] We have people who have been sold a brother and sister pair with
understanding that these ferrets would not breed [another human attribute
applied to ferrets by humans... it is only the human race who have
decided that brother and sister should not have children]
 
2] We then have the people who do inbreeding to keep some in their
ferrets such as size or aggressiveness which some working ferret owners
like to see in their ferrets.
 
3] Then their are the breeders who go out of their way to breed the wild
polecat attributes in to their line to get such things as aggressiveness
which these people think make a better working ferret, then we have the
breeds who do it to breed more colours such as black ferrets.
 
4] Then we have the people such as myself who breed ferrets with such
traits as gentleness of characters and size the bigger the better
 
I personally put down a lot of the health problems with US ferrets down
to early fixing, I personally have never seen the amount of ailments in
my ferrets or come to that any of the ailments in my ferrets that most
US ferret owners seem to take as being part of the problems with owing
ferrets.  Because we have started fixing ferrets here in the UK we are
now starting to ailments that have only up to now been seen in the US.
 
All ferrets are photopieriodic and my feelings are that ferrets that
live as naturale a life as possible and are allowed to go in and out of
season, plus being kept outdoor have a much healthier life in the long
run
[Posted in FML issue 4732]