Oh joy of joys!  There is finally peace amongst the fuzzies in my house.  A
few months ago, I brought home an adorable new baby fuzzie.  He was very
young.  I thought all was well during the first introduction, but as soon as
I turned my back, the others attacked him.  He was badly frightened by the
incident as cried, screamed, and ran when ever he saw one of the others.  I
have tried everything to get them to accept each other, but had no
improvement until recently.  I had grown desperate and desided to go to
extremes.  The newby had been staying in the small temp/sick cage by
himself.  I removed all but the water bottle and some towels, and put him in
with the only little girl I have, shut the door, and let them have it out.
Now before any of you think of flamming me, let me just say that this "baby"
weighs close to 4lbs where the little girl weighs 1 1/2lbs.  There was a
little fussing but not much.  After they had settled down, I put food and
litter pan back in and left them alone.  The key thing here was the size of
the cage and the absence of a hamock.  They had to be touching each other
all the time.  Well, after a couple of days, they were actually snuggling!
At the end of the week, I changed ferrets and put the next biggest in with
him.  The same thing happened.  Now I had only one ferret left.
Unfortunately, he is the most dominant of the bunch.  Before I did the last
switch, I let them all out to play at the same time.  There was some
fighting, but I noticed the baby wasn't running and hiding.  He was fighting
back and standing his ground.  Well he must have decided he was ready,
because later on, I found them all in the main cage together of there on
choice.  That's the way they have stayed.  Last night, the baby didn't have
to deffend himself (much), and actually began to play with the others.  This
makes me very happy!  I felt so bad when he was by himself with no cuddle
buddies or play mates (besides myself).  The only benifit to him being by
himself for that time was that he became very people oriented.  Enough out
of me already!  Happy Holidays,
 
     CHERYL
[Posted in FML issue 1412]