Human babies, puppies, and baby ferrets tend to be nippy. Babies put everything within their reach into their mouth to learn about what they find. Puppies put things in their mouth to chew. Puppies nip their litter mates to learn how hard they can rough house with other dogs without causing permanent damage. Ferrets are similar. As babies, they engage in copious amounts of dietary indiscretion (that's what my vet calls eating rubber bands and other things not edible). As babies, ferrets also nip.
Some ferrets nip gently, and others nip hard. If the ferret isn't trained to stop that little bite, he'll keep it up. Many ferrets end up in shelters because of this. Or someone buys a ferret, it nips, they become afraid of the ferret, and the ferret stays in its cage all the time. Ferrets that lack sufficient play time and interactions with other creatures become insecure and scared and that nipping can turn into official biting.
It's important to stop nipping before it turns into bites, for you and your ferret.
What's the difference between nipping and biting?
Nipping might hurt and it might leave little ferret sized dents in your skin. The dents disappear soon enough (within a few hours), however, and there was no blood involved int he adventure.
Biting, on the other hand, is when a ferret clamps on, pierces your skin, and draws blood. If this happens, you first need to get the ferret's jaws off of you. The only way I've successfully done this is to take my other hand and cover the top of the head while holding their jowls in my fingers and using their jowls to get around their teeth. Then I try to gently pry teeth off of me by opening the ferret's mouth.
Biting is an extreme situation though. Most ferrets don't bite. In the last two years I've had fifteen ferrets go through my house, and I've only had one biter. The local ferret shelter usually has around fifty ferrets and it is uncommon and rare to find a biter in the mix.
Biting is the result of a traumatized and misunderstood ferret, and the ferret needs special love and patience. If you have an actual biting ferret, engage the help of someone in the ferret community.
Nipping, on the other hand, is relatively easy to deal with.
Some people suggest flicking your ferret's nose or blowing in their face when he or she nips. I'm not convinced that does anything. I have a much simpler (or maybe more complex) approach that seems to work. It's two-fold. Figure out what the ferret wants, then don't give it to them until they stop using their teeth to express their wishes. Please note that this works on non-traumatized ferrets. This method doesn't work with deaf ferrets either. (For deaf ferrets, look them in the eye before you pick them up. Deaf guys usually bite because they're shocked and didn't expect to be swooped up.)
Figure out what the ferret wants.
Gracie was a nipper, but this behavior was most common when I held her. Hm. Further "experiments" revealed that the behavior occurred when I held her more than a few minutes. Hm. Okay, she was a baby. She had better things to do than be held by a silly human. I needed to recognize that. She needed to recognize that teeth are not the way to get what she wanted. Alas, up until I figured out what she was doing, teeth were indeed a successful way to get down.
Retrain and don't give the ferret what it wants.
Gracie and I did more experiments. I discovered that she licked me a few times before the teeth came into play. A signal! She was telling me. So, when Gracie licks me, I put her down. There were times, however, where this signal wasn't given or I didn't notice it. When the nip came, I kept a hold of her. And I kept a hold of her. I kept her until she gave the other signal, licking. And then I'd let her down.
And if I have a real biter?
Firstly, decide if you can handle a real biter. Do you have little children in the house? Do you have extra sensitive children? Do you have a husband that screams like a little girl when he sees blood? Or do you become overly dramatic? A ferret bite hurts. When a ferret bites you need to be able to calmly deal with that fuzzy. This is most difficult to do when you're in pain and you just want to throw the thing causing you pain as far away from you as possible.
If you can't deal with a true biter, contact someone the ferret community. There's a ferret mailing list that you can ask questions on. You can find the ferret mailing list (FML) at http://ferretmailinglist.org/. Alternatively, you can contact a local shelter and ask for help. (And if you have a small child in the house, strongly consider placing the ferret in the shelter. Most shelters will happily let you visit ferrets, especially if you offer to help clean.) You can find a shelter via the directory at It's a Ferret's Life.
Working with a real biter
If you decide to work with your biter, join the ferret mailing list and ask for help. It takes a lot of patience.
My biter, Lizzie, I pulled from a shelter that dealt with cats and dogs. She was in who knows what kind of situation, and then she went to a shelter that didn't know anything about ferrets. My hands sported blood shortly thereafter. My husband and I spent over six months working with this little girl. We'd put Vivify (a ferret treat) in one hand and stroke her back with the other hand. We looked her in the face and told her we were going to pick her up. I bought a lot of N-bones and held her while her mouth was busy with the N-bone, putting her down just before she finished her bone. This was a time of building trust. I'm happy to report, two years later, that Lizzie doesn't bite anymore. She doesn't even nip. She asks to be picked up, and I'll even let her near my face. But there was a lot of time, patience, and blood involved in achieving this result.
Good luck!
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