>zen and the art of ferrets - bill and diane <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Oh Hullo!  Always nice to hear from friends...
 
Hey there Bill and Diane - how are you both doing?  Great to hear from you -
I knew that you would pick up on my posting Bill - and best wishes from
England to everyone else reading this.
 
>And so.... is the partial poley we got from you a partial "wild" or not?
>This was indirectly through Sue to Glenna to us... (Okay getting into a
>personal note I guess...) But regardless this hob is fair better tempered
>than the descendants of James McKay's Peter Polecat that made it to this
>country.
 
Oh yes - the "partial poley" you have is from wild stock.  If my memory
serves me right (I personally had nothing to do with that particular batch
of ferrets, so can't comment with any real authority on their parentage),
the descendants from Peter Polecat that came over in 1995 were first cross
to wild polecat.  The one that you have (on which I CAN comment with real
authority) is from a litter that is 3 generations removed from wild, with
the wild polecat coming down through the hob line, in each case the jill
selected was done so on the basis of tameness and general tractability.
This way, we were attempting to combine the best of the wild physical
structure with evenness of temperament.  If there is a difference in your
hob being more even tempered, I can only suggest that to be the reason.  So,
the qualities that we were focusing on in our breeding seems to have met
with a degree of success.  What do you think?
 
>Are you referring to European mink, American mink or domesticated
>American mink?  The wild American mink around us are similar sized to
>ferrets but the domesticated ranch mink are larger and heavier.  The
>larger size was deisred and bred for to get a larger pelt for the fur
>trade.  Other than that we agree fully on the "personalities" of mink.
 
The mink that originally escaped in England around 1929 were American mink,
I'm afraid that without a bit of research I can't tell you if they were wild
or domesticated ranch mink.  I'm looking forward to you visiting me when you
are here, so with regard to the relative size of UK ferrets to mink -
perhaps you will be able to tell me?  :-)
 
I will be contacting you privately soon as I have a few points on the
differences between general breeding practices in the UK and the USA, that I
would like to discuss in detail (and probably at GREAT length).
--
George Parker
[Posted in FML issue 2004]