Rabbit control in Perth

We use ferrets for our rabbit control work around Perth as well as other methods such as dog, gun, nets, traps, poison gas & rabbit-proof fencing. Here are some of the ferrets that won’t be out working just yet though. The six little ferrets, ‘kits’, in the basket are a late litter, just under 9 weeks old. They have the attractive white/dark ‘polecat’ or ‘poley’ markings that give their faces so much character.

Six is the normal litter size for a female ferret, a ‘jill’, to have, though we’ve had litters as large as 13 and as small as 3. Jills normally have no-fuss births overnight; you just find a bed full of kits in the morning. We have had one jill that needed a caesarean operation to deliver a single, very large kit; this didn’t survive unfortunately, but the jill recovered very well and went on to have a normal litter the next year.

The kits eyes open at 3-4 weeks old, the same time that they really start taking solid food rather than just milk from the mother. They really do love eating rabbit; it seems to be a natural instinct because they’ll make a bee-line for it if they smell it, even if their eyes aren’t open and they can’t see it. This natural instinct is what makes them such good hunters for rabbits, whether they’re in large areas like fields or in smaller areas like gardens.  That’s why ferrets are a valuable addition to all the other methods that we use to get rid of rabbits, such as dog, gun, nets, traps, poison gas & rabbit-proof fencing to name a few.

Andy has had ferrets since he was 8 years old so he’s got years of experience in the traditional country skills of using them to control pest rabbits. And we just love working with them, they really are such characters.