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So I've had my ferret Chris for almost a year now. He's three years old and and I recently got a new ferret that's a baby male about 6 months old (Jeff). I'm scared because I can't tell if they like each other or not.

Jeff is a very active hyper ferret, he often bites at peoples feet and likes to play rough. Chris is the older one and he is much more mellow. At first when I got them, they were fine together. Jeff would try to play with Chris but he would ignore him. But recently they get into fights - some were small and some bad and resulted in Jeff pooping himself.

Neither of them has ever bled, but it looks vicious to me. My cage has the ability to be split into two cages and when they were friendly I had them together and they would sleep together and be friendly. They would occasionally get into fights outside of the cage. After they started fighting out of the cage and Jeff started pooping himself, I made the cage into two cages. They both seemed fine and still are in separate cages but when they get out they sometimes still get into fights. When they get into fights or whatever it is, it starts off as them just smelling each other and then one gets all riled up and it always ends in Chris getting Jeff by the throat and Jeff will start loudly squeaking and I break it up. I need help I don't know what to do, whether this is normal and they're just playing around or if they genuinely don't like each other and I should just let them out separately.

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  • They really are loving creatures! That's definitely just them playing. Like the guy in answers said. I work at a pet shop and we had two ferrets in one cage and did the same thing. They were closer in age though.
    – NealC
    Mar 4, 2017 at 1:58

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I used to raise ferrets, and the roughness and biting just seems to be a ferret trait. They jump and chatter and bite and bounce...even the most socialized of them just can't help biting sometimes. One of my ferrets had a very odd game that she used to play with one of my roommates at the time, an older man who had a bit of a drinking problem. He would lie on the floor, watching TV and drinking, and the ferret would bounce over and bite his toe. He (usually half drunk, he was a very mellow drunk) would knock the ferret off his toe. Back the ferret would go, and get knocked off again. He said he didn't mind (even though the ferret would sometimes draw blood) and she was obviously enjoying herself. I watched this go on for a good ten minutes once. Eventually the ferret would tire of the game, and would crawl up on the man's tummy and contentedly go to sleep.

Because I did a lot of work to socialize my ferret babies (feeding them by hand even before they opened their eyes) I used to constantly have people who purchased my babies call me up days after they took their little guys home to say "I can't believe how gentle your ferret is, he hardly bites at all".

Because Jeff is younger, and because Chris sees him as an "intruder" on his home territory, Chris is probably trying to establish his dominance. This is normal mammal behavior, not restricted to ferrets. The pooping may be Jeff's way of showing submission, or he might be actually frightened (though ferrets seem to be almost fearless, compared to other mammals that I have owned or raised). I've never seen a ferret defecate out of fear, but most of mine were siblings or raised together.

I don't know what the relative sizes of the ferrets are, but if Jeff is significantly smaller I'd make sure they aren't left together unsupervised until Jeff is large enough to hold his own. Eventually they will end up being great friends, though even then there will be a lot of nipping and tussling that goes on. That's just how they interact.

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