The more important aspect of natural lighting is enough true full darkness rather than a lot of light. Ferrets are descended from animals which lived largely in appropriated burrows and were active mostly at dawn and dusk, not creatures which scampered around in the sun. The reason that darkness is so useful is because it is during darkness that bodies produce their own melatonin. Re: Ferret Tears; Do they cry? No, not with tears though they will whimper or cry with a "whraak whraak" noise, and they can get very depressed. If there is a lot of fluid coming from the eyes during a hard time like mourning than more likely that they have caught a bug like influenza or a bacterial sinus infection (not a cold) while they are so stressed and their eyes are watering too much from that. Stress does tend to make individuals more vulnerable to infection. Their eyes are of course lubricated and that lubrication can increase with irritation. Actually, MF does not kill the unwanted ones last time I discussed this topic with an executive there. I was a little involved with several industrious and loving people (both out of MF and in it) in setting up viable alternatives which were welcomed years back and as far as i know have been used since, and don't forget that MF workers themselves tend to have ferrets in their families which actually made the need for alternatives low. The USDA makes its inspection data public. I don't know if they still use the old method (where a request is sent to them and then the data is released) or if they have switched to fully website access now which was a possibility that was under debate. You can learn that with your own searches or by seeking the past posts in the FML Archives. Given my druthers since "backyard breeders" are so much worse than anyone else who breeds for causing harm to ferrets I'd like to see stronger laws which provide serious punishments for people who do terrible things to animals through such a situation. The best, of course, are private breeders who keep serious health and longevity records and readily cull lines through sterilization if there are health problems present -- placing health, longevity, personality and such long before appearance aspects such a pelage. Farms all fall between the two worst and best. Distributors and pet stores are yet a different difficult topic; there are good ones but there are also horrid ones. Rumors have a tendency to be worse than reality, and that goes for the ones about MF as well as those too many have sadly encountered. [Posted in FML issue 4179]