>After the ferrets in the shelters are adopted and the way of getting a
>ferret is more costly, longer and more stressful on our little friends
>(from a shipment with other ferrets to alone and by ups)
 
Do you even know the route by which ferrets get to the pet store??
They're shipped and trucked in by the crateful, and in our area pet
stores have had ferrets packed so tightly in the crates that they fight
each other out of fear and hunger.
 
Small-scale breeders ship single ferrets all the time.  Shipping to one
destination (as opposed to pet store ferrets who are shipped to a
distributor then held there, then sometimes mixed in with MORE ferrets,
some are shipped to a secondary distributor, then to the pet store) by
UPS would be a huge improvement.
 
I realize you are enthusiastic and want to educate, but you need to
learn a lot more about this before you make these kinds of statements
or recommendations.  The trip from the mill to the pet store is a much
longer, scarier, and perilous journey than the trip for one ferret to be
shipped directly to its new address.  Research a little more about the way
ferrets get from the big-scale breeders to the pet stores.  You may be
surprised (and dismayed) by what you learn.  Many ferret experts and vets
believe that cross-contamination of diseases like ECE happened in transit
when the baby ferrets from different breeders were packed in together and
handled improperly by the distributors.  Many pet-store babies have been
found to be carriers of ECE that they picked up in shipment from other
ferrets, not from the breeder where they originated.  It's entirely
possible that ADV is going to turn out to have spread this way as well.
 
Ferrets shipped directly to a new owner from a small-scale, responsible
breeder do not carry this same risk. There are always risks shipping live
animals, but the reasons you state are not good reasons to encourage the
purchase of pet-store babies.
[Posted in FML issue 3763]