Buying ferrets – are hobs and jills the same price?

I am going to the Midland Game Fair in September and hope to buy 3 or 4 good ferrets from working stock. How much should I expect to pay? Are hobs and jills the same price?

Ferrets
EDWARD COOK says:
Lurchers, terriers and ferrets are often paraded around the Midland Fair with a sales tag telling all and sundry that they’re from ‘excellent working stock’.

I don’t doubt that some are but, on the flip side, there are others that aren’t.

Some years back I watched ferrets being bought from a person of ‘dubious character’ who was happily telling the new owner that these little critters were ‘amazing workers’.

The buyer soon discovered these ferrets hadn’t been hand-held and from what I saw of them they barely deserved the name ‘ferret’ – the poor beasts looked severely underfed and dehydrated as well as dirty.

I personally wouldn’t buy a dead cat from such a salesman – after all, it’s the easiest sales patter in the world to say stock of this kind is the best you can get.

I would recommend you go to a reliable source rather than get stock that’s owned by someone with a very creative imagination.

There are a huge number of people across the country who are devoted to their working ferrets, so why buy stock from someone trying to make a quick buck?

I won’t sell my ferret kits or lurcher pups to just anybody and I’m very lucky because any surplus always go to good friends.

That said, if a keen ferreter really is stuck for good kits then they can contact me through Sporting Gun and I will see what I can do to help.

As for price, ferrets (hobs and jills) seem to be selling well at £15 each this year which is very little really when you consider that price amounts to only 15 rabbits.

About the author

Edward Cook

A professional rabbit catcher and ferreting expert, he served for many years on the Shooting Times question-and-answer panels, answering readers on ferret feeding, welfare and working, and wrote features on rabbit control, including shooting alongside the combine harvester.

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