From:
<grape_apes@charter.net>
Date: 2007-05-24 04:58:49 UTC
Subject: [ferrethealth] RE: getting your ferret to drink more water
To: ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com
This may sound weird as a way to get your ferret interested in drinking more water, but it has worked for some of mine and in some of the cats I've taken care of for pet-sitting clients:
Try a drinking fountain for pets. It maybe makes it more fun for them or something, I don't know. Most of my ferrets love to play with them and drink from them, especially the kind where the water spills off the end of the spout versus follows the spout all the way into the bowl portion of the fountain. (Just put the fountain on top of some surface you don't mind getting wet and messy-I placed mine in a shallow plastic container so they could get in to that easily and still access the fountain without ruining my wood floor.)
One of the cats I care for and a couple of ferrets I've dealt with have consumed more water when these have been offered. I also have a pet-sitting client who leaves a sink on a low trickle for her cat because he likes to drink from the stream (I think that's a kind of expensive and wasteful option, personally) and my Daisy, for some reason, far prefers water out of the tub bottom than her bowl or bottle given a choice (though she will drink water out of a bowl or bottle-she prefers to knock the bowl around and drink the spilled water better, though, so she gets deep placemats or I put her bowl ina disposable aluminum pan at work; we usually use them for litterboxes, heehee).
We just always make sure our tub is very clean and that we rinse any soap or shampoo resideue very well aftr any use of the tub. If we are home, we sometimes keep a towel over the edge so she can get in and out on her own, and remove it when we go out (I'd hate for her to get in, pull the towel down, and then be stuck in the cold, foodless, pottyless, bedless tub till I get home!) We never put more than an inch of water just around the drain area-the rest of the tub is empty, but she prefers the droplets at the emptier end of the tub. She's weird...
Try offering a variety of water sources-some just prefer one type to another. My Cora would go up three stories in the cage to drink from a water bottle when there were floor-level water bowls and the fountain. She just preferred a bottle.
Best,
April (vet tech and ferret owner)
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