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Post by summer on Dec 22, 2009 14:00:57 GMT -5
I sound pretty dumb saying this but I really wanted to. First, I am not sure if I am saying this because I am a huge animal fanatic (mostly those common house pets). As much as I love my ferret I would never have the heart to feed her a live prey. Maybe, MAYBE frozen but I still cant bare to knowing it died to be fed to a ferret. I know its life and all but if they can eat already dead mice or raw meat from groceries, why go into live prey? So anyways here I am, curious to see what it looks like so I search `Ferret eating live prey`and the first video that pops up are 4 ferrets in a bathtub killing mice...Ok...So I click on it and as soon as the mice were dropped in I was about to cry, than as I watched them getting eaten so brutally and hearing them scream I got sick to my stomach and I still feel like I want to throw up. How do you you all live with the fact that you killed a life, and all that pain they went through? I`m not trying to sound mean or anything Im being serious...Ive had hamsters as pets for 5 years now, Ive bred them a few times, accidentally actually, and I loved having all those babies around me, and than to think of them being eaten? OMG! I really wouldnt bare that. This sounds stupid but once feeding my gecko some baby crickets I looked in the container and noticed a cricket with his leg stuck in the door and how he was trying to get out as delicately as possible without hurting himself and I thought to myself that they are like humans and have the same feelings as us...They feel pain just like we do. (Ps: I let that cricket go for some reason i didnt want to watch him die after that for some reason) Its just sad. Imagine your ferret, if he or she wasnt born a ferret but a mouse. Same emotions, same love, same exact personality, and than being bought and given to a snake. They are still pets. Anyways thats just my opinion. I wanted to know how others feel about that? Dont you all feel any guilt or sadness?
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Post by Kerit on Dec 22, 2009 15:50:25 GMT -5
Pets are pets and food is food. That's the short version of it for me! Many people choose not to feed live for some of the same reasons you do. I rarely feed live, and I wouldn't at all if my personal ferrets weren't very efficient at dispatching adult mice. I've owned mice and rats and gerbils as pets, but I've fed all three to my ferrets as well. I loved all my rodents dearly -- in fact, I ended up adopting my original ferrets after I was so broken up about my last rat's death that I decided I couldn't handle owning rats again for awhile. Those rats were tiny family members. The rodents I feed to the ferrets now, however, are livestock. We live in a society where if you don't want to look your dinner in the face, you don't have to. But no matter if you feed your ferret kibble or a gerbil, an animal is dying so that your pet can live -- that's nature. Same thing with a hamburger. Either you are overseeing the death of a food animal, or somebody else is for you. I don't at all think it's a bad thing to be personally involved in the prey's life... but then, I hunt and have spent time around farms, too. My mom grew up on a dairy farm, and I remember years ago her turning to me and sighing "can you imagine what your grandfather would be saying if he knew you were keeping mice... on purpose!" Whole prey is a perfect nutritional meal for a ferret, and what they evolved to eat. One way of looking at it could be that it's selfish to deny the ferret what nature designed him to thrive on just because you feel bad about it! That said, I would never feed a mouse or rat that I considered a pet... just couldn't do it.
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Post by summer on Dec 22, 2009 18:05:04 GMT -5
I understand feeding them dead mice or frozen mice...but LIVE? I felt so bad watching videos of ferrets attacking live mice, hearing them screaming and watching them running for their lives as the ferrets pounced on them. I know in the wild that is what happens but why encourage it? I look at it in the way that those wild mice and other wild ones, we cant do much about it, but those in the petstores looking for homes and all, if we can prevent them by dying like that, why not?
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Post by Kerit on Dec 22, 2009 20:52:37 GMT -5
I can only speak for myself on that. It's a debatable subject, and everyone has to draw their own line. I see the enrichment that an occasional live meal brings my ferrets, and how quickly and naturally they dispatch of it and consume it, and so I put more value on that than an un-socialized, unknown mouse's potential life as a pet. If my ferrets were poor or confused hunters, it'd be cruel to a mouse and I wouldn't do it. So in my mind, it boils down to... a few seconds for the mouse that brings my ferrets obvious enrichment, or the mouse being CO2'd to sleep over a few minutes in a container with dozens or hundreds of other mice at a facility.
I've seen live feeding videos on YouTube too, and I wouldn't replicate many of them with those ferrets. Many of them seem to be done for the humans' enjoyment, not for the ferret's benefit... just like why some people insist on feeding live to their reptile. I do not feed my snakes live prey and never would.
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Post by goingpostal on Dec 22, 2009 21:15:19 GMT -5
I guess I don't really see the big issue. People seem to have this idea that death is less "humane" just because you don't see it or have to directly deal with it. For me, I know beginning to end how my feeders are kept and cared for and I let only one of my ferrets dispatch the mice as she is very fast, the others are not effective or good killers and I don't believe in letting them be played with or tortured to death.
There's very little screaming or running around, she grabs them behind the neck, bites the spinal cord and drops them, they are dead in about 30 seconds total. Ferrets are predators, feeding them involves other animals dying no matter what. I could set up a co2 chamber but it wouldn't be any faster.
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ls84
Going Natural
Posts: 102
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Post by ls84 on Dec 22, 2009 22:03:25 GMT -5
I don't yet feed my ferrets whole prey, but I do own snakes and I feed them frozen thawed and occasionally live when I take in a rescue that would rather starve than eat a live rodent. I have also had hamsters, mice, rats and gerbils as pets. My pets were my pets, and the rodents I feed my animals are "food."
Another note, I am a vegetarian. I choose for myself not to eat meat because of my opinion of how animals in the food industry are treated everyday for months or years before they wind up on your plate. In my opinion, while I wouldnt like watching it, a ferret or a snake killing a mouse is MUCH more humane than the way we kill our "food" in America. They always say "If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian."
My point is that is just a matter of giving an animal a personality and feelings and an "identity". Some people are just better at giving their ferrets that identity and keeping the mice they eat as food necessary for the survival of the beloved pet.
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Post by summer on Dec 23, 2009 8:44:41 GMT -5
Oh, I never knew they died so fast. In the videos they lasted like 3-4 minutes and the ferrets just kept snapping but they would get away sometimes with a missing leg or something I think that is what made me freak out on the whole issue really. People who feed them for enjoyment just to tape it for youtube and look 'cool' are the worse ones on how they feed them live. Anyways I am not sure what to say haha
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Post by Heather on Dec 23, 2009 17:30:41 GMT -5
3 or 4 min...that's cruel, legs pulled off.....not going to happen in this household. I'm beginning to think that kerit might have made a correct statement that these videos have been created to shock, or amuse a rather twisted audience . I feed both frozen and live. I raise my own little mouse colony to feed my guys and as kerit mentioned they're food, not pets. It's the only way I could possibly afford to feed my 2 businesses whole prey. The rats that my guys get are frozen, killed humanely by a person who raises snakes, who has a CO2 chamber. My guys have hunted rats and done clean kills but after an episode that resulted in a rather botched hunt, they're not allowed to hunt rats anymore. They made the kill but it wasn't humane and I decided that even though most of the time they were up to the job, a very aggressive rat could cause them serious damage and resulted in a terrible hunt. I was raised in an older time when hunting wasn't done for sport, it was meat on the table. My father taught me how to hunt. If you hunted for pleasure you didn't need to and if you didn't make a clean kill you didn't deserve to hunt. I haven't hunted in years, the wild life has a hard enough time without someone else with a gun, I hunt with a camera . I apply my hunting phylosophy to my furbabies. My cat is an excellent hunter but like most cats likes to play with his dinner. He looses his prey to the ferrets, I will not have an animal tortured in my house. More often than not, my guys don't even allow a squeak out of their mice. The mice never really know. My girls much more effective and deadly than my boys but everyone except Captain Jack hunts (Captain Jack used to snuggle his mice , now he kills but he's not very effective so he's not allowed to hunt and gets someone else's fresh kill, he's happy with that) and generally the hunt lasts no more than a couple of seconds. That's the problem with utube, it gives you a picture, of a certain point of view but unfortunately it's only one point of view and that view may be flawed. ciao
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Post by sherrylynne on Dec 23, 2009 22:35:32 GMT -5
It's also quite possible that it was someone who's ferrets have never hunted before, and were presented with adult mice that they couldn't handle. Which is why we tell people to start them off small, so that doesn't happen.
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ferretfreke
Cageless and Roamin' Free
Raw and Whole Prey Feeder[/b]
Posts: 235
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Post by ferretfreke on Dec 24, 2009 5:16:55 GMT -5
The person I was 10 years ago would NEVER have believed what I've been doing for my ferrets now.
Feeding my ferrets live prey was the only thing that got them to realize it was food. I had tried every suggestion on here and even things I thought of to try to get them to eat pre-killed. It was one of the hardest things for me to do, but I love my ferrets that much and wanted to feed them what they were evolved to eat that much. It still isn't easy for me to feed live, (I even get all shaky about it, stupid I know) but when I see the enrichment it brings my babies, it is worth my discomfort. I still do it because it helps my ferrets with some of their anxiety issues (they are all rescues). Two of my ferrets are so fast that most of the time the mouse had no idea what even hit him. I have them make the kills for the others. I do feed fresh killed and frozen thawed, but even then I make the ferrets hunt their food by dragging and dangling it. They don't go as crazy, but I think it is still great enrichment for them.
I'm also raising my own mouse colony and I much prefer to know that the prey I am feeding my ferrets are raised with compassion and kindness while they are alive. When ordering pre-killed you never really know for sure how they are treated. I actually do care about my feeders, which does make it tougher at times, but they are treated really well because of it. I always say a little prayer of thanks to every mouse also.
After the first time I fed live I was feeling like I was a really horrible person and the wonderful people on here really helped me with that. Someone put it very simply and said "you're not a horrible person. You're just in love with carnivores." That still helps me.
Whether you feed kibble, raw, or whole prey to your ferret, some creature is giving it's life. That's part of owning a carnivore.
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Post by Lynxie on Dec 24, 2009 12:04:28 GMT -5
I was facing the same problem as you until just recently. I own rats as pets, and have a hard time with the thought of feeding live prey to any animal. However, I came to the realization that not only is it good for them nutritionally, but it is also great enrichment. I want to be able to give my ferret the best life she can possibly have, so I'm starting to expose her to whole/live prey.
Regardless of what you feed your ferret, something has to die for it. Whether it be a mouse that the ferret killed itself, a cow to get those beef chunks, or a chicken for the by-products in the kibble (though that's debatable, imho. LOL).
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Post by spiritualtramp on Dec 24, 2009 13:39:16 GMT -5
Another note, I am a vegetarian. I choose for myself not to eat meat because of my opinion of how animals in the food industry are treated everyday for months or years before they wind up on your plate. In my opinion, while I wouldnt like watching it, a ferret or a snake killing a mouse is MUCH more humane than the way we kill our "food" in America. They always say "If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian." I have to agree with ls84 - even feeding frozen raw foods is far less humane than feeding live whole prey. Research the meat packing industry, rent the film Food, Inc - you'll understand soon enough what we mean. I don't feed live often, it's more of a very special treat when my kids get live. Mostly because it's expensive. But I have to say, those mice lived out their purpose far better than any number of food item livestock animals out there. I had a teacher in high school that used to rattle on about an object or animal or person's purpose on this earth. A coffee cup's purpose is to hold liquids. Usually they do this quite well. A mouse's purpose is to exist on a specific plane of the food chain. Ferrets exist on another place in the food chain, a place whose purpose is to eat 'vermin.' (Since this is what they were probably origninally domesticated to do, hunt rabbit & mice.) And a mouse that lived it's life in relative comfort in a pet store, or was raised at the home of a live-feeder, gave its life to its purpose in the end, and was given a pretty decent life before that. What makes a pet a pet is pretty arbitrary in reality - 'pets' and 'love' are human ideals that we bestow upon certain creatures and not upon others. But, it's how we function, and I'm pretty sure our purpose probably has something to do with tending to the rest of the universe's purpose as well. We have the means and the power to control the cycle of life as we see fit - we ought to do so as humanely as possible but without sacrificing nature's intent. Letting a ferret dispatch of his meal is generally quick, painless, and as natural as possible. It's the best we as humans can do without upsetting the balance of nature - we take care of the mice, we take care of the ferrets. Eventually both with die. But neither died in vain!!
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Post by fuzzymom on Dec 24, 2009 22:26:52 GMT -5
I feed live on rare occasion just because I no longer feed live to my snakes. I used to feed live to my snakes and any snakes that didn't eat, the ferrets got the feeders. I only allow two of my ferrets to actively hunt the mice. Twitch does not let the mouse suffer. I put her in the bathtub with the mouse and she goes right after it. There is little to no chasing. She knows how to corner it in the corner of the bathtub, press it up against the tub and bite down on its spine and death is instant. Now that she knows how to hunt, I see no suffering on the mouse's part. Damien is still learning but with time he will get better. Twitch usually kills any mice I need to have killed. I once had loose mice in my bedroom and I set her loose in my room and she found and killed all the mice in the room. I had to go fetch them of course but she's an excellent hunter. Ferrets are meant to eat whole prey and what better way to stimulate them then to give them live prey. Twitch goes nuts over a live mouse. I can barely hold onto her once she sees the mouse waiting for her in the holding cage. People often ask me how I can feed my ferrets and snakes such cute little mice. They are so fluffy and cute. How horrible I am to feed off something so cute. Its just a defenseless mouse. Those same people go home to eat hamburger and hotdogs, steaks, and porkchops. What they don't think about is that those hamburgers, hotdogs, steaks and porkchops, at one time had a face. It had a brain. It had a soul, and it had thoughts and feelings of its own. So, poor little cow, and poor little pig. If people can eat a hamburger without feeling guilty then I should not be considered a horrible person for feeding my ferrets and snakes mice. The mice/rats I feed to my animals live better lives than ANY factory farmed livestock, and their deaths are quick and almost painless, instead of drawn out and agonizing. And the main reason I feed live whole prey on occasion, is just because Twitch loves it so much. She is so happy and excited and I just love seeing her so happy. I'd do anything for my babies.
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Post by spiritualtramp on Dec 25, 2009 20:23:14 GMT -5
If people can eat a hamburger without feeling guilty then I should not be considered a horrible person for feeding my ferrets and snakes mice. The mice/rats I feed to my animals live better lives than ANY factory farmed livestock, and their deaths are quick and almost painless, instead of drawn out and agonizing. Amen!
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Post by Little Wise Owl on Dec 31, 2009 0:51:53 GMT -5
I know how you feel, Summer.
I will never feed live prey to a pet, nor would I recommend it to anyone. I think it's cruel and unnatural in the fact that you're pitting two unpredictable animals with each other in your home, in a controlled environment.
I have had to personally kill some rodents for my snakes but it was through gassing or quick neck snapping. A tleast, I know the animal wasn't chased, attacked or harmed prior to the quick killing.
To each their own, I guess though. That's just my opinion. I won't point fingers or call anyone evil for feeding live.
Except for the guys that come into our local pet store with the single goal of feeding live adult mice to whatever carnivorous fish they have... They gloat and show off the idea constantly. I always have to refrain from punching them because people shouldn't own pets for the sole reason of watching them kill other animals..
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