If we talk about what ferrets eat, then it will take a long time to list. It is believed that the main food they serve are small rodents – mice and rats. Indeed, ferrets catch them with surprising agility, most often deftly digging out of earth burrows. But often the food is much larger animals and birds. A large chorus is able to get, for example, an abandoned adult hare, not to mention bunnies and chicks grouse, black grouse and grouse. He will not disdain either a frog, a grasshopper or a large beetle.
From spring to autumn, ferrets for prey are abundant. But by winter, when the chicks and bunnies are growing up, and the frogs freeze until spring in inaccessible places, the list of everything that ferrets eat is somewhat reduced. However, these fine hunters have adapted to find food even under deep snow. At this time of year, not only mice and rats serve as their prey, but hazel grouses, and sometimes black grouses, that have snorted for the night in the snow.
Adult forest ferrets are hard to tame, but at a young age they easily become tame, and even breed well in captivity. This feature people have been using for hundreds of years. For example, in the Middle Ages, very popular ferrets-albinos-furo were very popular as pets. They were kept in houses on a par with cats and used to fight mice and rats, as well as to hunt wild rabbits hiding in burrows. In the famous picture of Leonardo da Vinci “The Lady with Ermine” is just captured a ferret-furo on the hands of a noble woman. At that time, ferrets were looked at for food simply, feeding them both different types of meat, and caught live mice and rats.
Nowadays, the content of domestic ferrets, both furo and frets, is quite common. The latter look more like their wild relatives than albinos. But if the wild animals have black hair covering and looking out from under a dense yellowish undercoat, the frets have a variety of colors. In addition, in nature, animals are forced to procure food on their own, and ferrets are fed from the owners’ households. To ensure that pets are always healthy, cheerful and mobile, their owners should be well versed in the issues of feeding.
