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Can I feed my ferrets too much fish?

Ferrets like fish, it makes their coats looks great and it's safe to feed them fish every other day

Can I feed my ferrets too much fish?

Q: I caught a load of mackerel during the summer which are now in the freezer. My three ferrets enjoy a bit of fish but with so many mackerel to get through I was wondering how many I can feed them each week. Can they overdose on too much oil rich fish as these?

A: Having recently rekindled an interest in sea fishing I too feed my animals fish – this tends to be the heads because I like to eat sea fish as well!

I once fed my ferrets fish for an entire summer because I had a surplus of the stuff and their coats looked amazing, almost mink like.

If you have got time, fillet the fish in order to reduce the chance of a ferret swallowing a fish bone. I recommend you give half a mackerel to each ferret every other day. They love the stuff!

Simon Whitehead

About the author

Simon Whitehead

A Suffolk-based professional ferreter and rabbit controller, author and Shooting Times contributor, Simon is known widely as The Ferret Man and acknowledged as the last full-time warrener operating in Britain. Born in Middlesbrough in 1968, he moved with his parents to Suffolk in 1984 after the collapse of Cleveland's steel industry, and turned a boyhood fascination into a business in 2001, demonstrating ferreting at country shows nationwide through the summer and controlling rabbits in rural and urban East Anglia through the winter. Simon has become ferreting's premier demonstrator in the UK, sits on the Shooting Times expert panel and writes regularly for the magazine. He is the author of four books, including Ferreting: An Essential Guide, published by Crowood, and Ahead of the Game, celebrating wild rabbit as food, and has appeared in television programmes on rabbit management.

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