With very warm/hot weather approaching I like to repost this as a
reminder on how I keep my ferrets safe from the heat:

Several years ago while at our campground our air conditioning in our
trailer quit and boy did the heat start rising quickly. We also have
a large screened in front porch so I took the cage with the ferrets
on the porch to get a little relief from the heat in the trailer. Then
I remembered I always kept lots of frozen 20oz water bottles in the
freezer for fear something like this would happen. I also had bought
some tube socks at a thrift store to keep up there ...So I had the
makings of a semi air conditioner to put in their cage!!! What I did
was put the frozen water bottles in the socks leaving both ends of the
sock to put thru the cage wires and then used a large safety pin to pin
together. I did this on 3 sides of the cage. Since the litter box kept
me from putting the water bottle along the floor I just put it above
the litter box and anchored it there with each end of the sock out the
cage wire and pinned. I also did this on the bottom level the same way
and since I had one more bottle left I put that on the inside top of
the cage and pinned that extra tight so it wouldn't fall. I also had
an ice cube tray that makes those tube ice cubes made for the bottle
drinks to add those to their water bottles if needed. I then added a
sheet to cover the whole cage. My cage is a medium size 2 level cage
that I separate the levels to keep 2 sets of ferrets in. Well I have to
say....I gave it about an hour and decided to peak in to see how they
were doing (I actually checked on them several times before this) ...
I lifted the sheet, opened the cage door and couldn't believe how nice
and cool it was in there...my ferrets were comfy and the water bottles
were still solid!!! I hurried up and closed the sheet up around the
cage to keep the cool air in.... I also had put them by the ceiling fan
on the porch so the air could also cool them thru the sheet and spread
the coolness that was already inside. I only wished I could of crawled
into that cage... My husband had to go all the way home to get the
freon to put in the a/c unit since that was the problem why it didn't
work...(my husband used to do that kind of work so we always had a
bottle of this stuff). All turned out well and we probably could of
kept the cage cooler for a longer period of time but about 6 hours
later the a/c was fixed and everything was back to normal. We could of
picked up and went back home but that is my weekend R&R and I had the
ferrets cooled but if the freon didn't work thenI wouldn't hesitate to
pack up and leave. This worked for me and now I always have a freezer
full of frozen water bottles just in case... I also do this at home
since we are more likely to have power outages in the extreme heat...
At home we have the ferret nation cages so I am thinking of freezing
a couple 2 liter bottles to put in them...

**Please keep filled, frozen water bottles of any size available to
help cool your ferret cage.

Jackie

At the bridge:
Sierra, Cinnabun, Snowflake, Furrari & Koda
At the bridge: Taz, Opie, Harvey, Buster, Plato, Cybil, Simon, Coby,
Peanut, Lexi, Bandit, Mo, Echo, Precious, BumbleBear, Dominic, Mindy,
Trance, Adrian, Hershey, Honey, Laney, Voodoo, Wally, Sir Duke,
Zipper, Duchess

Ferret Fun things: http://jackiesdecals.webs.com/
http://stores.ebay.com/FERRET-STUFF-Plus-More

[Posted in FML 7462]