>They're young, and cute and people are going to want to buy them for
>their children and what not and then in a few months they'll be at
>a shelter and THEN some of you think it's best to adopt them from a
>shelter. So why not get them early on from the pet store and knock out
>the middle man and all the agony the ferret will have to go through?

And what happens the next week after the one you "rescued" is replaced
by a new shipment? It doesn't matter if you look at it as rescuing or
buying - the petstore and the commercial breeders look at it as
profitable. If you dislike the petstore situation the best thing to do
is to not buy from petstores so you don't support (with your money) the
sale of kits and explain to potential new owners why not to buy from a
petstore.

With education the number of ferret kits in petstores could be reduced.
Here there are three stores which sell ferrets and only one sells them
fairly quickly (within a couple months). Both of the other two end up
all or most of their shipments being 6+ months old before being sold.
Sure I feel bad for those ferrets but IMO it is better for ferrets as
a whole if that is the situation. The one store has gone from getting
shipments of 10 ferrets to just three. That is a good thing :)

Certainly I'm not saying that people shouldn't love their petstore
bought ferrets. I bought Ophelia at our local store for the price of
a feeder rat. I adore her and am glad she ended up with me but if I
couldn't have gotten her for a loss to the store she wouldn't live
here. I simply don't believe it is good for ferrets as a whole to
continue to support the sale of them in stores.

Nikki

[Posted in FML 5489]