The earlier comment about MF and not breeding fancies anymore caught my attention. I have 3 MF ferrets. My oldest is a regular sable and when we got him 3 years ago in Washington State, most of the other ferrets were regular sables as well (I think there might have been one albino and one brown in with him) When we got our other 2 two years ago here in Upstate New York, there were almost no regular sables in the group. Our younger male is a silver mitt, and our female is a mutt (blaze, bibbed, half-mitted, silver reared, sabled front). Amazingly enough (even surprised our vet/surgeon) she is not deaf at all - she was actually the easiest to train to come to a squeaky or call. Though she is not without problems, most likely from breeding - she has an very small jaw and lips, allowing her to only open jaw about half of what a normal ferret can manage (she definately gets enough to eat though, she is overweight at the moment although we are working on that with more exercise) While they both caught our attention with their coloring, we were also looking for attitudes and activity levels. Visiting the pet store today, we saw a few regular sables, some sables with white markings (white chins mainly), chocolates, champaigns, one albino, a few silvers. Last year I definately saw more "fancier" ferrets at the pet store than I am this year. So it is hard to say what the truth is. I have to agree though that it seems somewhat unlikely that MF would stop breeding fancy ferrets when the competition is not. Stephanie 3 fuzzies and a ferret herding puppy [Posted in FML issue 4067]