Hi All ... Sorry this is a few days after the first post on the
subject, but am only just catching up on reading the past few weeks.

Here in Western Australia - either when waiting to be able to breed a
jill or when those intended to be sterilised beat us to the punch and
come in to season early, we do, whenever possible, use vasectomised
hobs to bring jills out of season as it is seems not to have the side
effects that hormone injections can produce.

In the same way that we use a full hob for breeding, we wait until the
jill has been in season for two weeks before putting her with the hob
because doing so before this is rape and the jill does not enjoy it one
little bit. Putting the jill with the male at two weeks brings about a
totally different mating .... the jill "plays hard to get" for about
twenty minutes or so and then just rolls over and "says take me I'm
yours". Mating in this way is a delightful ritual with no screaming &
fighting at all ... and absolutely no stress for either the ferrets or
their owners.

We have also observed differences in behaviour between jills put with
a vasectomised hob and not pregnant and those put with full males
intended to produce kits. Following mating with a vasectomised hob the
jill, although gaining a little wait and grooming humans more, she does
not strip the fur from her underside to "line the nest" in readiness
for her kits nor do her nipples grow in readiness for feeding and after
the 42 day period she seems to happily go about her business as usual.
On the other hand the pregnant jill seems to know she needs to prepare
her nest (which we give her the opportunity to do by giving her her own
breeding space at the end of the fourth week), her nipples do become
prominent and she certainly gets really territorial with any and all
other ferrets which come into her space. These are only a few of the
usual differences but I have never had a jill show signs of distress
after a "phantom" pregnancy. I have certainly seen distress when a
birthing has gone wrong and none of the kits survived - fortunately
this occurred on only one occasion as "Chloe" went completely nuts and
it took more than three months for her to stop looking for her kits
and start to get back to her previously loveable, cuddly self.

Thanks to all for the links you provide to the other side of the world.

Dianne.

[Posted in FML 5623]