Raising Ferret Kits

[Deleted]

G'day all, hope you all had a good Christmas

Now, I had my first two ferret litters on the 1st of December this year. One litter of 3 (mutant) kits to Scarlet & a litter of 5 kits to Missy. The girls are sisters & both are raw fed girllies.
They were both mated to a borrowed hobb, a Sable called Elvin, who's produced quite a few litters already for a 2-3 year old. He belongs to a lady near me & he's fed a lot of raw meat also, but he has 4 different kibbles available at all times.

So, now both litters are 26 days old, all the kits have quite a ferocious set of teeth on them & really starting to boogie. I've noticed that all the babies are getting tidbits of meat when I feed mums that they seem to masscre within minutes. Even though they have teeth & Lukus, a friend who's bred his ferrets for quite a few years (oldest are 9 years now, crikey!), tells me this is normal (his are also raw fed) I just thought to double check that this is normal & okay for them to be eating raw meat already?
Both mums only take in bits of mince, which is normally kangaroo or beef, though sometimes I get a super fattie chicken mince to bulk things out, but they don't take that in or anything else in.

Also, along much the same lines & I've seen this a lot in the rats & mice I breed in likewise situations, Scarlet's being 3 kits are getting a lotta milk & so are much bigger, Scarlet also lays with them heaps. Missy's kits are noticeably smaller, being a bigger litter, & since they've gotten teeth, she doesn't seem to settle just as well. I've started giving her a pet milk to enrich things & mix it into her mince pretty often for the kits, which I've seen her bring or drag themselves out every so often to chow down on her dinner. They are markedly more interested in the mince, but they are no less well developed or sickly/weak looking.
So, the question is do I leave them as they are or start to suppliment feed them with with a syringe? I give them some extra mince & add in an egg yolk for them every second day also, which seems to help fill them. I'm possibly going to suppliment feed Vivians litter if they appear poorly, which were just born on the 19th & are doing very well considering they are quite small (litter of 7 from Vivi, they were smaller than any ferret kit I've seen born before). Not worrying about doing that at the moment, but would like to know if there is even a chance I should.

And lastly, my biggest concern. In Scarlets litter there is a little jill I've called Cyclops. The reason for this is becase at about 5 days old, I found her right eye was all crusted in this brownish-yellow substance. Scarlet was taking good care of her, so I didn't wash it off, just kept an eye on it. Next day, it was gone & her eye was open. I'm suspecting it was pulled open by trauma, which would explain the crusty stuff, but it's healed & the eye has continued to develope with the rest of her. She's kept it closed for the most part, but as it gets closer to eye opening time, she's opened it more. Now, I've noticed it appears a little milky, not hugely, but enough for me to notice it & be worried. I asked Lukus about this & he said he's only had it happened once in a rescue jill he was given a few ears ago & the kit ended up blind in that eye.
So, with Cyclops, I'm tossing up keeping her or rehoming her to a close friend who's picking up a sister when they're 12 weeks old. I don't feel comfortable selling a blind animal, even if the species isn't reknowned for excellent eye sight. Do any of you reckon she'll end up blind? Should I be particularly worried about such or just accept it as life?

[Sherry]

I've not had experience with tiny kits like this, but from Everything I've read from breeders both on this board and elsewhere, if they are eating the mince, let them. Most start giving it when they are about 3 weeks old.
With your little One with the eye damage, not likely anything could be done about it now, so if it's not bothering her, I'd not worry about it.

[Heather]

Congratulations on your little ones. You may want to prowl through this thread holisticferret60.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=breederboard&action=display&thread=2269&page=1 Though most of the time we're just oooing and ahhhing over the pics of the little kits there are also mentions of amounts and what they're eating at the certain stages.
Quite a few of our breeders who prowl the board are probably wrapped up in their Christmas with families they will probably check with the board shortly and they can offer you some suggestions. Now, all of them are raw feeders and I don't know if that's the direction you want to go or not. I was surprised as to how young these wee ones were into full boned meats. At 3 weeks the little ones in the pics in the thread I've offered were eating a meat and goat milk supplement mix.
As far as your wee little girl, it sounds like the damage may be done. Only a vet check can help you tell for sure. Good luck with your wee ones, we would love to see photos when your wee jills will allow you to see them
ciao

[Deleted]

i have a one eyed Pirate and she is as fun filled with urine & vinegar as the rest of em. She was a rescue from Ohio along with many other ferrets 4 years ago. You wouldnt know she was blind except her missing eye.

[lorelei0922]

Hiya and congrats...

first questions... are they suppose to be eating that early.. Yeap.. they're doin as nature intended.. i'm SUPER hands on with my kits and they are given their first meal of a rabbit saddle well tenderized so its easier for them to rip pieces off.. at 3 weeks old.. by 4 weeks they are having several feedings a day of any raw meat that is on the mum's menu... sometimes she bring it in but mostly i arrange dinner times and tuck the kits all around the meat

that second litter you have sounds like it was a bigger litter.. therefore they competed for food a bit more and are a bit smaller.. no worries there, as they've made it this far mum's done a good job! again they can start supplementing with a puppy formula milk replacement in a bowl with mince and in the coming week or two you can start giving them small ammounts to drink anyways, and up their own feeds, they can manage ripping pieces of meat to shreds very well at this age!

Now your little jill... this is a not uncommon condition caused by a bacterial infection that sometimes occures with carnivores. the crustiness you saw was puss. her eye opened early because the puss built up pressure and burst the seal on her eyelid. in many cases the eyelid then recloses and opens at the normal time ( around 5 weeks) In hindsight, she should have been to the vet to have the pus drained and cleaned or you could have carefully cleaned it and kept it clear in which case it may have sealed back over. Now as to this "cloudiness" could that be more puss? if so .. vet check her please..

could the infection done damage to her eye, this is a possiblity.. just be sure to carefully wipe and keep her eye clean and clear while the eyes open fully and wait and see unfortunately... If she should develope a problem, its likely gonna be with only the one eye and pose little to no problem, if she was blind when she opens both eyes ( the cloudiness could have NOTHING at all to do with this infection but simply be a genetic problem) she will adapt fine and by the time she's 6 months old you wouldn't be able to tell she had a problem as she'd have learned long since to adapt.... the one blind girl i have had stayed with a sister who is her seeing eye ferret. They live together and have a ferret room. their mum is careful not to change things in the room often and if she needs to she drags Bumble along a path that leads to the food, water and litter tray ... you'd never notice to look at the play that she was blind and a bit.. ermm... special lol

i had a little lad who opened his eyes in this manner at 10 days old.. both of them.. He still lives with me here and is almost 3... see's perfectly fine from both eyes and is the biggest hob of the entire litter.

[Heather]

Thanks for popping in Lorelei. I know things can be really hectic at this time of year and sometimes getting timely answers can be difficult.
Merry Christmas
ciao

[crazylady]

Hi as lorelei has said feed feed feed ! ( my kits get fed four to five times a day once they start hitting on meat simply give ground meat mixed with milk for the first week ( this takes the strain off mum too it means she only has to give a night feed ) after the first week its pile in the meat and milk time and let them dive in once there coming out there noses soon lead them to food eyes open or not lol what you could of been seeing with the kit is the third eyelid ( this comes across just like a cats when they eye is infected ) you wont know for sure until the eye is fully open I would keep it clean by simply wiping three or four times a day with a little cotton wool dipped in boiled water with a little salt added ferrets dont have terrific eyesight to begin with so she wont be that handicapped if she does turn out to be blind in that eye but only your vet will be bale to tell you that boy you sound like you have your hands full lol take care bye for now
Bev

[Deleted]

All my ferrets are raw fed, so raw feeding isn't a problem for me. It's more the fact they're so little & already chowing down on mums tucker. Mums have been getting double the amount of food, but still the kits seem to keep eating, so I'm just piling it in as fast as I can.

As for the little jill with the eye I'm worried about, it's a cloudiness similar to that of a cataract. I've dealt with a lot of infections in animals, to the me crustiness wasn't puss-like but then again, I've never seen such a thing with a ferret kit & so you could be right. She hasn't had any other discharge from it, it's clear & clean other than that cloudiness. My normal vet is on holidays, so I'll have to arrange to take her in to another vet this week & get it checked. She's currently the biggest jill of her lot, so I'm not terribly concerned though still worried all the same.

Another question though is, out of both these girls, only Missy has produced me 2 hobbs. Is there a cause as to why I've had predominantly more jills produced? Their brother, Lucien, has fathered his first successful litter (thought that would never happen) & it appears to only have 2 hobbs in it too. Why is this? With rats & mice, sex ratio can be effected by diet, season & how old the parents are at the time of the litter, as is the same with some other species. Would this go for ferrets also, or am I missing something here?

Thank you for all the help

[lorelei0922]

not sure how sex is determined in a litter of kits ... ie.. how many of each there will be lol... but i've had uneven litters and even litters and it doesn't appear to be down to the health of the animal..

size of the litter usually has nothing to do with the size of the jill though... young mums usually ( though not always) have larger litters and then fewer as they age... my first year jills have have all had over 10 .. the largest being a litter of 13 and the smallest litter being 5... no idea why she had so few as the same hob fathered 12 in another jill the next day.