Help! New Ferret Can't Deal With It's Ferret Company

[Karissa]

My family and I have had ferrets almost my whole life either two or more. We had twelve at one point. We have only bought a few of them the rest we took in from families who could no longer take care of them for whatever reason at the time.

But recently we have taken in a three year old girl. She has never been with any type of animal. She has only had human contact since the day she was purchased when she was a baby. She was fine with our dog, adjusted to us quickly and the cats didn't bother her at all. But our most playful ferret almost instantly began to jump on her to play but it scared her. Now she has become so aggressive towards the three boys we have that they avoid her completely. They scurry from her.

We really love her and don't want to have her send her somewhere else. We are slowly trying to show her that the others mean her no harm with individual meetings at a small distance that myself and/or another family member is present but she tends to lunge at the boys to bite them and she will scream while doing so. We know she is just scared but we don't want her to be scared anymore. Does anyone know what we could do in order to show her they are friendly?

[Sherry]

First, females will ALWAYS be alpha. Also- is she deaf? That would account for the screaming.
Next- can you work on getting her accepting just one of your boys to start? It will take work. Once she accepts one the others should be easier.
If so- get some sudocream. From amazon if need be. Next follow this holisticferret60.proboards.com/thread/13752/helping-semi-aggressive-ferrets-get

[racheld]

I don't know if this would apply to ferrets but--on My Cat From h*ll a commonly used technique is to feed the animals first where they can smell each other but not see each other, then where they can see each other but not reach each other (like through a screen door or baby gate), and gradually bring them closer together so they get desensitized.

[Deleted]

Jun 10, 2014 1:06:45 GMT -5 racheld said:

I don't know if this would apply to ferrets but--on My Cat From h*ll a commonly used technique is to feed the animals first where they can smell each other but not see each other, then where they can see each other but not reach each other (like through a screen door or baby gate), and gradually bring them closer together so they get desensitized.

Love that show!!