Hi ferret people, I was reading about the female ferret Hale, who was fighting an illness for several months before dying and wanted to share a concern. Most of you, if you have books on ferrets, already know but for those that don't, female ferrets MUST EITHER BE BRED OR FIXED OR THEY MAY DIE! Ferrets stay in the heat cycle for 6 months if they are not bred and their metabolism(sp) changes so much that they get sick and if not taken care of die. After breeding our ferrets we decided to get Rascal fixed and use him to get Shadow out of her heat cycle. What we didn't know was that after getting him fixed he would lose all interest in sex and eventually we ended up taking Shadow to the vet to be fixed. We didn't really want to because if ferrets become legal in [state] we wanted to breed her again. The vet gave us heck for waiting so long to bring her in. By the way Shadow was a very good mother, letting us handle the babies but always watching, and after the babies were a few weeks old we reunited Shadow and family with Rascal and it was great! They all got along real well. So long for now, GC [Posted in FML 0004]