Oh boy, a flame-war.  I want to play too!
 
Personally, I suspect that there is not much NEED to allow ferrets to hunt
for their own food.  It should be pointed out that for some captive
mammalian carnivores it has been found that live food IS important to
health.  Some zoos have found that providing live dinner (rabbits/goats)
rather than hunks of meat to tigers and other predatory cats produces a
much healthier animal.  The animals loose their beer guts.  They stop
moping around and keep attentive.  They take more interest in playing with
other toys.  They clean themselves.  Unfortunately zoos also get flamed for
this practice, because tigers will play with their food before eating and
many people believe that this is cruel.  (I think it was San Diego that had
problems a few years ago.  I wish I had the reference, but that seems to
have been buried.)
 
Ferrets SEEM to do just fine with live human toys/dinners, and I see no need
(YET) to provide them with a live dinner.  If someone could demonstrate that
hunting dinner produced healthier ferrets, would live food still be
considered horrible and wrong???  (A full nutrition study would take 10
years, hundreds of ferrets, and lots of money so don't hold your breath.)
 
             Bryan P. Coffey - Boston, MA
          bpcoffey@(remove_this_part)gis.net
             http://www.gis.net/~bpcoffey
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       Weasel Warriors - Albi, Esef, Merri, and Mint
         http://www.gis.net/~bpcoffey/furball.html
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[Posted in FML issue 2328]