Today is a beautiful day. Sunny, breezy, low 80′s. It’s a perfect day to have the ferrets outside! Over the winter, we found a great place to buy custom cages, called Martin’s Cages. We ordered an outdoor ferret cage in anticipation of the spring. I’m so glad we did, because it’s really been great for the ferrets. They really enjoy being outside!

Sometimes we’ll pack it up and go to a local park. When we do that, we put the cage out on the grass and let them have fun. This usually involves a lot of digging holes, which in turn requires us to move the cage around a few inches at a time, so they don’t actually dig themselves right out. Ling is the biggest digger, and Jeff will stand behind her, getting pelted with dirt, and moving her dirt out of the way. He likes to help keep the digging area clean.

What we do most days, though, is just bring them out to the back patio. It is made of pavers, which are pretty rough, so when they scratch they actually file their nails! Some people say that depriving ferrets of natural sunlight cycles can damage their health. For this reason, we always try to keep them on a natural light cycle, and we think that bringing them outside really helps. When the weather is this nice we will have them outside from the early morning all day until the sun sets, then we’ll put them into their room with the lights off. I don’t know if it really effects their health, but I always try to do everything I can to keep them healthy.

When we bring them out, we have a large plastic storage container in the cage, just like the ones we use for the food and litter boxes. We put some holes in the top for ventilation, holes on 2 ends for entrances, and a t-shirt inside. This gives them a darkish place to hide out, if they feel too exposed, or just want a quiet place to sleep.

A lot of times that I’ve brought them outside recently, it’s started to rain and I’ve had to take them in early. Today looks like a perfect day, though, so they will hopefully get their full day in the fresh air!

Otto is 7 years old, and incredibly healthy! The only problem he’s had is that he recently had a weird growth behind his ear. If I had thought of it, I would have taken a picture of it before he had it removed, but I didn’t. As soon as we noticed it, we made an appointment at the vet. The vet said that it was a cyst, but it was solid. Typically cysts are liquid, and can be drained instead of surgically removed. Poor Otto wasn’t so lucky, and had to have surgery. All went well, and his stitches just started falling out a few days ago. Luckily, ferrets don’t tend to bother their wounds, or the wounds of other ferrets. That meant that Otto could simply go back and join his buddies after the surgery was done. A week of antibiotics is all it required. So Otto is back to his normal, adorable, old man self. Yay for Otto!

I’ll be writing here about the ferrets, the cage, maintaining this website, ferret tips, and just about ferrets and being a ferret owner in general. Also, I’ll be posting about our ferrets health and such, so you can all feel like you know them just like we do. Keep checking back, I plan to update regularly!