Like any pet, house training is an important part of bringing a new ferret into your home. If you are lucky then your breeder may have done this for you already, or maybe you have had the good sense to rehome a ferret from one of the many rescue centers around the country and they have already put in all of the effort and patience required to train your new playmate.

How easy house training is depends on what it is that you are trying to achieve. You will quickly learn that your new ferret will find a favourite place to use as a toilet, if all you want to do is to make that into a clean hygienic place by using a litter tray or newspapers etc too capture the mess then your job is relatively simple. To persuade a stubborn fuzzy to go elsewhere is more difficult.

The technique that I have found works for me is firstly to see where my ferret picks to do his business and try to live with it, then cover it in paper and trays to keep it contained and clean. After I got my first ferret, I found it easier to persuade the others where to use as the toilet by leaving a small amount of soiled material from the older ferret in my favored corner, this marked the area as a latrine and I also found that the new ferrets would copy behavior of the established ones so they trained for me.

I have also used a bitter spray to mark areas that I did not used. ferrets seem to hate the smell of bitter citrus fruits and spraying with a suitable solution, such as Anti Chew spray discouraged them from the area.

In sever cases I have had to reprimand my ferret with a strong verbal command NO but do not recommend any more sever punishment. I have never found timeout to work and do not flick noses.

Perseverance, a lot of love and time usually sorts out toilet training ...

Good Luck