Ferret Care - Grooming and Hygiene

Robin Hochgertel: I am Robin from FerretsFirst Rescue. We are here to teach you how to take care of your ferret. Now for ferret hygiene.

The things you need to take care of your ferret hygiene are ferret oil, ear cleaner, Q-tips, a good clipper and then some ferret lax. To distract your ferret while you are clipping the toe nails, you put a little oil on the belly and the ferret will lick the oil while you clip the toe nails and essentially be distracted by that oil. One thing you need to be careful of when you are clipping the nails is just to clip the tips of them, don't go down into the quick, it's very easily seen as a red line.

Now we are going to clean the ferrets ears. What we do is we scruff a ferret. Ferrets are used to being scruff, their parents scruff them. When you scruff them, they essentially go to sleep and they are very cooperative. So what we are going to do is we are just going to wet the tip of a Q-tip, that's done very simply by using a little ear cleaner and a cup.

You gently go through all the little nooks and crannies inside the ear, don't go down into the ear because the eardrum is located very close to the surface. So you are just going to clean out all those little nooks and crannies in the ear. That's one of the way to hold keep the odor of ferret down because if their ears get too dirty, they do begin to smell. Last but not least on your weekly ferret hygiene, you want to give them a little hairball remedy. It's a same kind of hairball remedy that you use for a cat. Very much like cats, ferrets clean themselves and digest hair. So you give them a little ferret lax at the end, they think they are getting a treat. Actually, what you are doing is preventing hairballs. When they change there coats, its a good idea to give them hairball remedy maybe 3-4 times a week.

Thats ferret hygiene, it's important that you do it at least once a week. Clip those nails, so that they don't form spurs and get caught embedding and perhaps, pull the nail out. Keep the ears clean, so they don't smell and prevent those hairballs. Next, we are going to be talking about ferret training.