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I have four ferrets but they don't all get along. Each pair of ferrets doesn't like the other. At the moment they have separate play times outside of the cage. They're also caged separately in case that wasn't clear.

I've tried letting them fight it out to work out their dominance issues repeatedly over a period of about a week at a time. I also tried doing this for one month with no visible change in behaviors.

What I did was let everyone out of the cage and let them have it. I tried to keep them busy by playing with them and their toys and distracting them from the other ferrets. If there was a scuffle, I watched for any violent biting, grabbing, and rough shaking (ferret grabs the back of the neck and shakes violently from side to side). If I saw any of this, I would pull the fighting pair apart and put the aggressor in a "sin bin", a cat carrier, for three minutes to let them know this behavior was bad. Despite trying to be as consistent as possible, I've had no luck.

There's never been any injuries that involved blood or breaking skin, just a minor irritation from the biting. No one's ever peed or pooped from being too nervous or scared either.

One pair is clearly more dominant as now the other pair tends to just run and hide and wait for me to put them back in the cage. They also lose (at least I think they're losing) most of the scuffles that happen.

Is there anything else I can try to get them all to play nice together?

Cuthbert
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I never had to deal with fighting before. However I had worst behaving ferrets. Whenever they did something that I did not like I would slightly tap them on their back. If it continued then I would completely stop paying attention to that ferret for the remainder of the day. You must have noticed how attention seeking they are, so their worst punishment is being ignored.

So for example what you are doing by putting them into sin bin is correct. Do keep in mind however that certain behavioral problems are very difficult to weed out, so all you can do is just keep at it and keep punishing foul play. Eventually they will learn. For me it took four months to teach them not to bite and not try to eat my keyboard wire or destroy the keyboard(they had beef with keyboards for some reason).

Quillion
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Hitting your fuzzy buddies isn't a good idea. Even a gentle tap is a bad idea. It can make them fear you, even if it is a soft tap on the back. They are more likely to become more aggressive. Time out in the carrier and scuffing them and gently dragging them across the floor is the best way. My kiddos dominance fight alot. Until there is blood there is no need to intervene because they are just establishing a pecking order or who is in charge and who isnt.

FerretLover
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Scruffing , hitting, dragging, bitter spray. All this stuff is horrible. You seperate them if theres and poo pee or blood. And try again later. You dont punish them. They are just showing who is dominant. It can take time. But you dont punish them. The poor things.

Laurie
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