Humans often misinterpret nipping as a sign of malice in ferrets, which is unfortunate because baby ferrets use their mouth to explore and for them biting is mostly a friendly behavior. A way to communicate and play with other ferrets and humans. Being social animals they are normally pretty willing to cooperate with whatever rules we lay down but they aren’t born knowing that we don’t like being bitten. Our skin is much thinner than theirs and so we have to tell them that biting hurts us. How we tell them is the subject of this article.
The most common methods for nip training baby ferrets is by gently pinning them on their back when they bite, scruffing them or restricting their movement in some way, just like a mommy ferret would. Be firm but gentle. Make sure never to squeeze or hurt your ferret while nip training. Some ferrets may squirm to get free. The point
is not really to assert dominance the way you would with a dog but more to show the ferret what bothers you. Some ferrets are naturally more cooperative than others. But generally the closer you are to your ferret, the more he or she depends on you for friendship, the more he or she is likely to want to please you.
One method that seemed to work particularly well for me was to hold my baby ferret in both hands, with one hand underneath her jaw so as to allow me to restrict her from making any biting movements. Once I had her in this position I would hold her up close in front of my face and wait for her to try to bite my nose. Just as she
would inevitably lean forward to bite my nose I would tighten my hold alittle to restrict her, at the same time pulling her a few inches away from my face. After a few failed attempts at biting my nose she started licking it instead. It only took a half hour or so for her to get the idea. From then on whenever I held her up to my face
she always gave me a kiss instead of a bite.
this is a good way t learn how to train your ferrets i have got seven. They are called Rascal, Tiny, S.j, Dizzy, Sandy, Crystal and Ollie.
when my baby ferret used to bite me, sometime she never let go so i just gave her a little flick on the nose very lightly and if she still didnt let go then i had to squeeze her inbetween her jaw to let go. Is this ok ?
I just adopted a ferret and it bits at shoes even when there on your feet. What should I do?
Squeezing in between the jaws to get them to release you is ok. Nose flicking on the other hand I have always believed that is painful for them and not a good deterrant. The reason is I have heard a lot of stories where people have tried that and what usually seems to happen is the ferret is too startled from the pain of having their sensitive little nose flicked to associate the punishment with whatever they were punished for, so the lesson is never learned. The ferret just gets angry or feels victimized or whatever.
As for shoe/foot biting I am not one to give advice on that because the two ferrets I owned who were compulsive foot biters I was never able to break them of the habit. Gentle pushing them away sort of discourages them after a while, and gets them to bite less, which was the best I could ever seem to hope for with mine. However I partially blame my husband for that because he would just sit there and let his feet be chewed on thus undoing all my hard work trying to train them not to do it. It sure would be great if someone would invent some kind of shoes that have a built in force field for us ferret owners XD