I thought I would tell everyone a story about my male ferret that is
quite interesting.  We received Elmo from a pet store at around 10
weeks.  They couldn't sell him right away since he had the anal (?)
problem that sometimes occurs after being fixed.  We took him to our vet
and he was fine.  After being terrorized by our first male (Ernie) he
grew into a beautiful butterscotch (?) and looked like he was even going
to be bigger than Ernie (this actually turned out to be all fur!)  After a
while he began terrorizing our female (Grover).  He was very agressive in
what seemed like a sexual type way.  He also Loved to marked the house
with urine.  We took him to the vet at around 6 months to see if he could
tell if Elmo had really been fixed.  The vet felt around and said he
thought Elmo had; perhaps he came from a more agressive litter.  O.k.
fine - we've got a sexually agressive ferret that won't leave poor Grover,
who is almost half his size, alone.  It got bad enough at one point that
Grover's neck was all scarred up from his handling.  Then, one day months
later we came home and Elmo had blood near his genitalia.  He wasn't
flowing but we called our vet who said to watch him till tomorrow.  We
did and he seemed fine.  We got home from work the next night and he was
bloody again.  This time we rushed him to the vets office.  It turns out
that while Elmo had been marking his "territory" one time he must have
been still excited after playing with Grover and he cut his genetailia
by rubbing it against something (oooh that smarts).  Furthermore it turns
out that the vet felt a testical in there as well.  He hadn't noticed it
when we took Elmo in the first time cuz it hadn't dropped.  Sooo, we had
the vet take the other testical out; Elmo only plays with Grover now,
doesn't do indecent things to her and does not mark the house either.
 
So there ya go.  I'm sure that this doesn't happen often but if your male
ferret starts being agressive with your females and is doing those male
dominance things perhaps one thing to have him checked for is to see if
he was fully fixed (we got the pet store to pay for the final fixing;
they would not pay for the exam when Elmo got hurt since we "didn't go to
their  vet." grrrr.
 
Pamela Barber and Ernie, Grover and Elmo
[Posted in FML issue 1050]