Hello all! As you may have noticed from my subject line, I will be starting a ferret shelter shortly. I realize that it is costly, and has its ups and its downs. However, my husband and I love ferrets so much, and we cannot bear to think of any ferret homeless, or in a bad situation. We have been owned by ferrets for 3 years now, and hope to be owned by them for the rest of our lives. My only obstacle so far has been my husband, not because he didn't want to help out ferrets, but because he said he could not adopt any out -- he wants to keep them all. :> Money is also an issue, but I figured when will we have money to spare? Not likely in the near future. We just moved into a big old house a few months ago, and so we now have the room. We also just got a knowledgable ferret vet at the animal clinic that we go to. (hurrah hurrah!!!) For those of you out there who currently run ferret shelters, I would very much appreciate it if you could e-mail me information about starting and running a ferret shelter. Some of my questions are: 1. How do you get the word out to a widespread area that you will take in ferrets? 2. Do you need to do anything legally? Such as get any permits or anything like that? 3. What is the best way to keep your ferrets from catching any new diseases? We have only have 3 rooms in our house with doors. All the rest are open doorways, so putting new ferrets in separate rooms would not be easy after the first few. The other rooms are separated by baby gates with vinyl on one side in the necessary doorways. 4. Do you let your rescue ferrets run around in shifts, and if so, how much time do you usually let them run around versus being in a cage? 5. What are some of the ways that you screen prospective adopters? 6. What are some good ideas for fundraising? The animal clinic here has already agreed to give us some kind of discount, they have not yet decided what. But we barely scrape by as it is. These are just some of the questions that I can think of off of the top of my head. I know those of you who run ferret shelters out there are very busy. However I would really appreciate whatever information you could give me. If you can think of anything else besides what I have already asked, again, I would greatly appreciate it. I live in Hastings, NE, and am a member of LOS-NE. As of right now, I am not aware of any other shelters in the immediate area around Hastings. You can e-mail me at [log in to unmask] Thank you very much for any help you can give me. :> Dooks and kisses to all, Shelley Knudsen and The ferrets - Sasha, Seera, Spectre, Podo, Target, Jacob, Zephlyr The cats - Bones and Squirt The dog - Jenna [Posted in FML issue 1661]