>Got me thinking the other day, do our fuzzies miss us when we are not
>home with them, when we go to work, to the store, do they long for us to
>return to them??
>
>Do our fuzzies know the difference between strange people handling them,
>or even being in the same room/house with them verses people that come
>over regularly?...
 
I run a small rescue and I've seen many, many ferrets show evidence of
knowing, recognizing, and remembering their humans.  One girl boarded with
us for two weeks, had a decent time, but had a low energy level throughout.
Her owner came to get her, and she immediately perked up, danced around
him, went absolutely nuts.  Single ferrets get very attached to their
people.  Our crew treat each of us differently--they play more roughly with
Dennis than with me, for example, and Simon seems to think his ears need
cleaning more.  And an old friend of ours returned for a visit recently.
Selkie climbed into her lap and fell asleep.  The two of them were always
close.  When we're not home, our ferrets sleep.  When we come into the
ferret room, they go nuts.  Not sure if they "miss" us exactly, but they
seem to consider us the best defense against boredom.
 
As far as our food-switching technique goes, there's not too much to it.
Every ferret is different.  We have a seven-year-old right now who will eat
just about anything, and a two-year-old who won't eat her own food if a
single bit of any other kibble is in the bowl.  Most of the time, though,
we try to have a fairly large amount of all the major types of food on
hand, so that if a ferret without a history comes in, we can offer him a
wide variety until he picks one, then concentrate on getting him to switch
to something better.
 
We don't usually try to switch older ferrets' diets unless what they're
eating is very substandard; we've had too many negative experiences with
it.  Sometimes we'll catch them stealing out of the cat food dish, and
since the cats eat Nutro Max Cat, we feel it's safe to switch the ferret to
our mix, which has a Nutro Max Kitten base.  The mix we feed here is the
Max Kitten, Totally Ferret, and EIO Ultimate Ferret Diet.  Most of the
time, young ferrets wade right in.
 
If we do have to switch a ferret, we start with two side-by-side bowls of
food, one of the old stuff, one of our mix, and wait to see what happens.
A lot of ferrets actually sample both; some don't seem to care.  That makes
everything easier.  Some do care, and we go on giving them side-by-side
bowls for a week or so, to get them used to the smell of the new food.
Then we try mixing them together and putting the mix in both bowls.  We
do a mix of mostly old food in one, mostly new food in the other.  The
occasional ferret will refuse to eat out of either; most will pick around
the new food.  After a while, they'll eventually accidentally eat it, and
things usually go smoothly from there.
 
We've also given out pieces of Nutro Max Kitten as treats.  Some ferrets
think any food you're giving them one piece at a time is a treat.  Winter
will roll over for anything if she thinks it might be edible.  :-)
 
We generally anticipate some loose stools while switching foods, and try to
monitor them for color, etc.  We try not to change the diet of any ferret
that's new to the rescue, having a stress reaction, or in poor health.  In
severe cases (e.g. ferret has been eating dog food), we can't do anything
about it.  If the food is Deli Cat (addictive stuff, I think) or similar,
we try to offer our mix earlier than we would if it was something better.
And some ferrets come in with no histories at all, of course.  Not much we
can do about that.
 
I'm looking forward to seeing what others do differently.
 
Jen and the Crazy Business
http://home.maine.rr.com/tesseract
[Posted in FML issue 3040]