Dear Erin Reed, (and others who have an interest whether breeders or not) Note: This msg was posted to WSFA WSFR, but I have not been able to confirm that it has been received.) This is Edward Lipinski of Ferrets NorthWest on Seattle's Mercer Island. I've had the good fortune of breeding healthy ferrets since 1981. There are a couple of people in the Washington State Ferret Association who currently have four of the ferrets that were bred, born and LUMPS-raised here. I'd be so appreciative if you could go into specific detail concerning the difficult time you had with your beloved jill in your efforts to get her pregnant. Are you familiar with the two consecutive stages of estrus and know when to actually introduce the female to the male and not make the mistake of being so worried about aplastic anemia that you allow coupling way ahead of the time that seems to be optimum. Also, do you know how to ensure to the maximum degree how to asses the " fertility" of the male that you will use for coupling? Please describe in detail for me and for the other breeders who monitor this mailing list, just what you did. No one here will criticise you in any manner, shape or degree. I'll bust heads if need be if anybody does that to you. I'm little, but really mean (and I smell bad too.) If you are going into really quality ferret breeding and are not interested in numbers of kits, you may want to do what we've done here (secretly, so far), and that is to have your males perform in a manner that results in very small litters. If you haven't already noticed, usually the smaller the litter, the larger the individual birth weight of the kits, so the objective is to mate the female in a way that effectivelly reduces the number of healthy spermatazoa the ferret sire ejaculates. Obviously, the fewer the spermatazoa per centilitter of ejaculate, the fewer ova that will be fertilized and the smaller the litter produced. Please bear in mind that I'm certainly not referring to "coitis interruptus." This method, which is proprietary and secret, has enabled us to produce litters of 4 and 2 and no baby ferrets from a given female whom we knew was fertile as was the male viripotent (viripotent is a word defined to mean virile and potent; hence: viripotent. This word is used to describe a male animal known to be able to engender pregnancies, just the opposiste of the vasectomized male. The neutered male issues no ejaculate nor spzoa intervaginally.) The smaller litters assure that momma will have an easier time of suckling and caring for her kits. In addition I think it's easier on her reproductive system per litter and may permit you to breed her successfully yearly rather than striving for large litters and breeding only for pregnancy every two years. I applaud your emphasis on documenting the geneology of the breeders, but as I've found out the geneology trees in most cases aren't worth the paper they are written on. About the only sensible way to ferret out good breeders is start with the biggest and healthiest "mongrels" you can find. I am extremely warry of any breeder of ferrets who claims that she has pure-bred, pedigreed ferrets; especially if she uses the term, "purebred." If you're favored by the gods of chance and get good healthy kits over 2 to 3 years of breeding (F1 being the progenitors or the starting family, F2 being the first generation produced by the F1 generation, F3 being the second generation, and so on.) you'll be doing good. [Posting in 2 parts -- combined into one. BIG] As you may read thus far, I'm no believer in so called, "purebreds." As a matter of fact, in my experience, a mongrel ferret who is healthy, spunky and of good, solid muscle mass is the way to go. And, if you do breed for sales of your kits, you will someday be asked to possibly mate one of your sold females to one of your males, or to another male that you sold and is in ownership other than yours. Here's where you can get into trouble by accidently inbreeding or crossbreeding of F classes that are possibly too close in their filial relationships. To avoid this you may want to adopt our method or a similar method of inhibiting inbreeding by using a nomenclature program such as this. Consider the F1 sire whose name is Bandit. Consider the F1 dam whose name is Frisky. The F2 product of their filiation (mating), every and each kit born of this union would bear the name, "BanFri." To differentiate the individual kits of the Banfri litter you would assign an arbitrary number to each ferret kit as it is sold. The number would suffix the litter name; hence the first ferret kit to be sold would be named Banfri-1, the second, Banfri-2, and so on. You must tie the name of the ferret to the buyer in a legal document that only allows the sale of said ferret upon payment of a $500 title transfer fee to you - this to inhibit the sale of your ferrets to 3rd parties of whom you have no knowledge. Here at Ferrets NorthWest FNW, the suffixed numbers of the litter name are in a foreign language. In our case the chosen language is Japanese for two reasons: 1.) Phoenetics and 2.) Business. Everybody can pronounce Japanese numbers. Not so with other languages. Here on the Pacific coast there are many niesei (2nd generation Japanese and their offspring. Because I use Japanese language, many Japanese people are my best clients, and I have two ferrets now residing in Japan. Were I located in Milwaukie, I'd probably use the German language, and if in Washington, DC, use eubonics, being careful not to use the word "niggardly." The ferret's name would tell you instantly who the sire and the dam are. The sequential numbers suffixed to their litter name would tell you the sequence of sale and the preferences of your buyers. For example, what is the primary characteristic of all those kits of different litters that have the earlier numbers; i.e. 1, 2, 3, and so on. And why are the later numbers not sold as quickly or as readily? Creating such an historical perspective will permit you to breed to the major desires of your clients. Quality control of your breeding program is absolute in that just by knowing the litter name of your ferrets, you will not ever mate two Banfri ferrets, nor mate a F2 Banfri back to its Sire or Dam of the F1 generation. I hope this is not too confusing to you. Sometimes this naming of litters after their parents can get somewhat amusing; for example, consider the male ferret whose name was "Ferret" and his mating female was named "Queenie." The litter name was "Ferqu." I,as well, I'm sure, as other responsible, experienced and intelligent breeders will look forward to your responses. Glueck auf! [G.] Good luck. Edward Lipinski [Posted in FML issue 2572]