As can be read in my backgrounds, I have always been very interested in animals. As a result of this, I started keeping ferrets in September ’97. Since ferrets are very social animals, I wanted to start with two of them. Therefore, I bought two female ferrets in a pet-store in Utrecht. This concerned an albino one and a sable ferret.

As many persons keeping ferrets, I started to like them a lot very soon. At the moment, I can hardly imagine not keeping ferrets during the greater part of my live. I am the lucky owner of two very well raised ferrets. This concerns the sable ferret I bought for about 1,5  years ago and a silver panda ferret. The last one was bought by me about 2 weeks after my albino ferret got loose (and did not return back…). So now I have one Dutch sable called Michi and an American silver panda-ferret called Misty.

I really enjoy keeping these animals. Always opportunistic, in a good mood and very funny. What I really enjoy is walking with my ferrets. During this walks, my ferrets enjoy playing with the children and dogs they meet. It happens to be that my parents also have a Bernese Mountain dog called York. This is a very smart and nice girlie of about 4 years old. Unfortunately, she gets beeten in her legs by Michi every time I try to put them together, so our York is not very charmed from Misty & Michi.

As every new owner of ferrets, I had to learn and am still learning a lot of these animals. This in the beginning by looking on Internet, but later on I also joined a ferret club called "frettig gestoord". This ferret side also has a ferret mailing-list, by which I get a lot of nice and informative mails from other Dutch ferret owners. I can recommend everyone visiting this site to join such a mailing list.

But now something more about the main characters of this site : Misty & Michi

MICHI :
 

Like already mentioned before, Michi is a female sable ferret, born around beginning of July 1997. I bought her when she was 8 weeks old at a pet shop in Utrecht and she was the first ferret I ever bought. About 2 days later, I bought another ferret (albino) at the same vet shop, but Michi was more special to me all the time. In the beginning, she bited me about 2 times just to try whether my fingers could be eaten. But she unlearned this very quick (about 2 days after getting her) and never bited me afterwards. After this, Michi has always been my favourite ferret. She is very small, very thin and weights only about 610 gram. But I think she has an advantage being so small and thin, because she is much quicker and more dexterous than the bigger Misty. Michi is always very energetic when she is awake and eager to examine everything what comes in her way. Her energy can sometimes be troublesome in the way she can't stay calm, but I do not care that much about it because Michi is also a ferret who is very affectionately towards me : She want to be with me as much as possible, what can be very handy when walking with her. One call or whistle from me and she runs towards me again. Another good point of Michi is the fact she never wants to make a mess (Misty should take example of this...)

After I got Michi, I read really a lot about ferrets on internet. Therefore, I really knew very much about these pets at the end of ’97. Further on, I had two very healthy, well-raised female ferrets in my room. Therefore, I thought (at that time…) that I could raise a puppy-family successfully. In January or February ’98, I brought my Michi to a male ferret. After about 42 days, 9 young ferrets were born. Of course, I was very enthusiastic that moment. But this enthusiasm did not last that long. During the first two days, 5 out of 9 puppy’s just died. After this, the 4 ferrets left seemed to do quite well.

My enthusiasm returned and I saw the 4 small ferrets grow every day. I was very eager to reach the time that the young ferrets would open their eyes and the time would be there to raise the four youngsters to well-raised ferrets pleasuring their new owners every day. But unfortunately, this time never came. After about 3 weeks, I suddenly found all the puppy’s dead in the nest-box and my Michi having a very big wound on her belly. At that time, I did not think that much about the young ferrets who had died because I was just very afraid that I would also loose Michi and was very concerned with her. But fortunately, Michi recovered in about 3 weeks.

But now about the fact that all my young ferrets died : Unless the fact that I was really well informed and used healthy ferrets for breeding, it turned out to be a disaster. This disaster is totally my fault, because I was really not prepared enough although I new a lot about ferrets. I now know that you should NEVER breed with your ferrets when they are in their first period, because this often turns out to be a disaster. But even if I had known this, It would still not be sure that I would be able to raise the young ferrets in a responsible way. It is just very difficult to raise a litter of ferrets and this is only preserved to the ferret-owners who are really sure for about 200 % or more that they now enough to raise ferrets in a responsible way. Knowing a lot about ferrets and having healthy ferrets to bread with is sometimes just not enough to breed with them.

MISTY :
 

This silver panda ferret was born around beginning of May ’98. She was breaded in America, imported to the Netherlands and sold to me when she was about 8 weeks old.I got her on a Monday, just wanted to look and getting one later during this week. But after seeing Misty and having her in my hands, I just wanted to take her with me immediately. Fortunately, this was possible. When arriving home, I just got her out of the transport-box and put her on my desk. Then I added Michi. This went quite well, so I could put them together in one cage without troubles. Although Michi is about one year older, Misty has always been quite a lot bigger than Michi. At the moment, Misty weights about 1100 gram. Maybe because of this weight, Misty is far slower and less energetic than Michi. Concerning her character, Misty is  as nice as Michi. Misty is very calm when I take her with me. Her disadvantage is that she likes to make some mess in the ferret-cage once and a while.

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