Wesley
Wesley
Back in spring 2003, a lady called Laura got in touch with me regarding her albino jill Pandora who'd escaped into the woods for 2 weeks and come back pregnant. It is extremely likely that Pandora mated with a wild polecat as Laura lives on the edge of woods with nobody else near her. Anyway, Laura just wanted to know about rearing kits etc. so I helped her. I was also curious about the kits and asked if we could visit them. So when the kits were 6 weeks old, we went to see them (and Laura and Pandora of course!). The kits were adorable, as all kits are. ;-) When we got back home I kept thinking about the kits and whether to ask Laura if I could have one. My head said no as I have enough ferrets but as usual the heart won. I also thought it would be really interesting to see a hybrid grow up and see if their behaviour was different from "regular" ferrets. So I asked Laura if she had any kits left and if I could have one and one hob was left and Laura was happy for me to have him. :-)
So on Monday 2nd June '03 we went to fetch our baby. The babies were exactly 8 weeks old then. All the kits were still there so I had pick of the litter! I picked the darkest one and we called him Wesley. He was *very* shy even though Laura had socialised the little ones really well. The first day and night he was crying all the time, it was heartbreaking. Then Tuesday he cried a little bit and stopped towards the night. He immediately loved it here though, he was sooo excited when he got out for a run. Loved all the toys and pipes and everything. He started to interact with me more and bond with me but when I approached him, his first reaction was to run away.
Wesley became more tame during the second week he was here. When I came into the room, he still ran into a pipe straight away but then he also came out to play with me straight away. He is a very bouncy baby and bounces all over me. We have this game, he runs towards me and jumps up high so I can catch him. I then put him on the floor on his back and tickle his tummy so he runs away, turns around, runs towards me again and leaps into my arms/ hands again and he'll continue this game forever! :-)
What he also did for the first month was to bite hands a lot. Not nasty but he *loved* munching on hands. It hurt a little and he'd become more and more boisterous the longer he chewed hands so then I put him down on the floor to play with toys. He has now stopped the biting hands but he's so playful when he's out and will jump at me and bite the back of my arms for example, he just gets sooo hyper. ;-)
Laura gave the kits all sorts and everything to eat BTW so it’s such a pleasure to feed him, he eats chicken mince and chunks, pork, lamb, beef, he even had mackerel and trout at Laura’s.
It was strange though how the other ferrets reacted to Wesley. Some were frightened and Rose even cried when I put him near her whereas Riley and Tara definitely wanted to kill him. Great, as Wesley was supposed to go into a group with Bella, Willow, Tara, and Riley...
Update
Wesley is in Willow’s group now. I think I put him in around the 12th/ 13th of July. Soaked him in Bitter Apple and yet Riley was still so violent with him. I mean the Bitter Apple made Riley spit but as soon as he’d recovered, he attacked Wesley again. Tara attacked him but not too bad and Willow hardly attacked him and Bella won’t attack nobody now... I stopped the Bitter Apple after about half a week. Tara will sometimes go for Wesley and Willow as well but Riley and Wesley seem to be getting on now. Wesley *loves* Riley! To the point where he’ll get amorous with Riley! Wesley is a very happy ferret and keeps dancing around everybody and Riley plays with him so those 2 play a lot. Wesley has a few scabs (despite the Bitter Apple...) but nothing too bad. Usually I don’t like putting kits into groups as they don’t really defend themselves. But Wesley was heavier than anybody else in Willow’s group and also faster and cleverer. So he could cope. Also he was yearning to be with other ferrets. We took him to Laura one day and he played with his sister, Truffle, for ages! Pandora, the mother, came to me for cuddles! I think you will almost always get warfare when you add a ferret to a group. And like I said, Willow’s group was extraordinarily aggressive towards Wesley, maybe because he’s “different”. He definitely has wild polecat markings and compared to my polecat ferrets he is so much darker.
