Prison officers’ union calls for immediate end to practice at HMYOI Wetherby over fears for child and animal welfare
Replace ferret with kitten, and you can see your own speciesism
I’m not against the idea of therapy ferrets as, they are extremely snuggly and friendly animals.
The problem is that they’re very high maintenance and not incredibly sanitary pets. The problem is that the types of people who are in need of therapy. Animals are not always in the position to be able to responsibly care for a ferret, especially in the long-term.
In this type of situation, a cat is usually a better option. They’re more independent, far more sanitary, and tend to live almost twice as long.
The problem is that they’re very high maintenance and not incredibly sanitary pets.
AKA pets.
Snakes are low-maintenance and hardly ever shit. OK, they’re not cuddly, but you can’t have everything.
Assuming you’re not just trying to be cheeky, I think it’s safe to assume they meant relative to the average pet.
What average pet is low maintenance and doesn’t make a mess?
I didn’t say the average pet was either of those things. What I basically said was that they probably meant when compared to the average pet, ferrets are much more maintenance and less sanitary than usual.
I found having a ferret was slightly easier than having a cat in terms of maintenance. I don’t understand why they would be any less sanitary, they can be litterbox trained.
Cats more sanitary than ferrets? That’s a likely uneducated take. I have 3 ferrets and they smell less and are cleaner than cats for sure. Most people don’t properly care for them and treat them like rodents, their not! My ferrets are litter box trained as well as any cat and clean themselves often, and when fed proper diet they don’t stink (#1 ferret food in USA is Marshalls, first ingredient is corn meal which ferrets as obligate carnivores cannot digest). My ferrets smell vaguely of corn chips but the ones at the pet store stink like ass due to poor diet and improper husbandry!! But u are right about one thing- they are a lot more care intensive than cats! But boy do cats stink worse than ferrets! Ferrets also won’t give u toxoplasmosis, as likely 30+% of cat owners have contracted. So if anything cats are the more unsanitary dirty option.
I’ve had both cats and ferrets and find them comparable generally with ferrets needing slightly less maintenance. I agree that with proper care they don’t smell. What aspect of caring for a ferret is much more intensive than caring for a cat?
Ferrets sleep a lot during the day, but for a solid 4-6 hours are very active. Ferrets should be allowed to roam around SUPERVISED for ideally 4 hours a day, too many people treat them like cage animals and do not provide this enrichment. Their not cage animals, but they are too mischievous to allow full roam of the house unsupervised as they will tear into something or get somewhere they aren’t supposed to! I personally supervise my ferrets for almost a hour every morning and a couple hours every afternoon. A lot of times I can get away with making dinner and stuff while their out in the evenings, but one of them likes to chew on shit he’s not supposed to and one likes to climb as high as he can on the couch but is a clutz and prone to falling lol. One of them is a good boy and doesn’t really get into shit and kinda follows me around like my shadow, so he isn’t too difficult. Depends on their personality I suppose! Usually my SO and I are watching them together so one of us can keep them from getting in trouble and the other can get shit done. I have had cats and they don’t seem to get into the sort of shit my ferrets will lol. Never had issues with my cats getting into my snack cabinets and treating them like a dig pit LOL. I also have harnesses for them and take them on walks around the yard so they can sniff new things. Ferrets are awesome, but a lot of people don’t give them proper care. It’s hard to blame them because there’s not too many good resources on caring for ferrets anyhow, takes tons of personal research. They really should be given lots of enrichment, and the less ferrets u have the more u personally need to entertain them. For example having one ferret is basically abuse unless you hang out with the poor guy constantly, where having 2-3 still requires attention but they can entertain each other to some extent. After getting my last from Petco it took 2 weeks after switching diet before he didn’t stink anymore. It’s a shame what they go through in most petstores/ homes :( it’s almost like having a permanent kitten
Interesting how your experience is both similar and somewhat different. I only had one ferret but she basically hung out with me whenever I was home which was a fair bit as I’m a homebody. She would sleep in the bed with me at night and shadow around/help in whatever I was doing. I had my apartment well secured so I just gave her run of the place and she never got in too much trouble. Granted this was after she was an adult, as a kit nothing was safe and she had to be in her cage unless I was there. It was a dual level with lots of space and toys. I agree that ferrets get into more stuff in general and thieve too. With my current cat it’s more that she constantly wants to be within 1 foot of me and ideally sitting on me at all times. It’s relentless lol. Since she’s awake a fair bit more than my ferret was it feels like more work overall but I’d consider it pretty comparable in general. Please give your ferrets a pet for me :) I miss mine, I had her seven good years.
7 years is a decent life span for these guys! It’s a shame the breeding practices for them in the USA are so piss poor. I was unaware of a lot of this going into ferret ownership, probably would not have supported marshals or Petco given what I know now but their such cute little bastards. My younger boy Lucifer is about a year now and still a riot, pabu and momo the older 2 we got as a pair are probably going on 5 and 6 years. One is just starting to show early signs of adrenal disease I think, may need an implant soon but have been very healthy! I’ll give them a pat and a freeze dried minnow from u <3 pic of Momo my shadow
That little face! Thank you for spoiling them for me :) Yes breeding practices are horrible with Marshall farms. They’ve made it a monopoly so it’s almost impossible to get a ferret from another organization in the US.
Ah yes. The well known sanitary house cat. None of us have ever had our beloved pet pee in a toaster or our shoes or our beds and they certainly weren’t doing so out of spite. We all know cats are level headed rational beings. Well tempered. Tolerant of affection. Perfect for therapy purposes.
I’ve grown up with cats, and had a full blown litter + mama totalling 7 at one point. Currently have three.
None of them across 40 years ever pissed in vengance. Had a couple of slow shutters dropping turds, had some battle buttsprays, never had a single one piss anywhere but the litter box.
I do not think the cat was the problem in your experience
I’m not the guy above but decent care is vital for cats. I have been on ekough house cats to immediately recognise when they have cats from the whiff at the door.
The number of people who don’t keep the fcknig litter boxes clean is INSANE . I’ve literally had a mate tell me “you are the only people i know that have cats I can’t smell”
It’s called hygiene.
First big issue is that this facility has rats in the first place. That should probably be the primary focus of this article, that’s totally unacceptable.
But moving beyond that.
It’s insane that they’re using therapy animals for this purpose. If these were two separate programs and they were using dedicated rat catching ferrets, I could get that. That’s what ferrets do, and it sure beats scattering poison around. But those ferrets are also potentially being exposed to diseases and parasites and such from the rats and so they shouldn’t be used as therapy animals to make sure that they’re not spread to the children.
I have no experience with ferrets personally, but it also seems to me like you probably don’t want the animals you’re training to chase/bite/kill rodents to be the same ones you’re using to soothe kids with trauma and such.
As far as children being involved in and witnessing ferrets being used for pest control, I think that’s a bit of a mixed bag depending on the kids.
At the end of the day, some animals eat and kill other animals. Pretty much everyone knows that from a pretty young age, how many children’s cartoon and nursery rhymes and such are about cats chasing/eating mice after all?
Now actually witnessing that can absolutely be distressing for a lot of people who aren’t used to it.
But on the flip side, I do think that introducing children to that, if done properly, can often be beneficial to them, give them a better understanding of life/death, the food chain, responsibility etc.
Not that it sounds like they were doing this in an appropriate fashion. And of course if we’re dealing with children with various kinds of trauma, that topic needs to be broached even more delicately.
“children’s prison”
And it’s the use of ferrets that’s causing an issue.
What a time to be alive.
Blame the editor; there’s no such thing, legally speaking.
How do you mean?
The UK has young offender institutes, which are not, legally speaking, prisons. I would expect someone writing headlines to use the official terminology.
Separately I am assuming that the OP isn’t perturbed by the concept of punishing children (over some threshold age, at least) for crimes, which might include this kind of punishment, but takes issue with the image conjured by the word prison (which may be wrong, and only they can say)
The UK has young offender institutes, which are not, legally speaking, prisons
So… What’s the legal distinction? Because that just sounds like “Child Prison” with extra syllables
I am not an expert so am not the person to ask.
In a way it is a child prison with extra syllables, but as I said, my guess is that the OP doesn’t object in principle to a 17 year old being locked up if they commit a serious enough crime.
That’s fair, they should be using the proper term in the headline.
If a child commits a crime in the UK, the Crown revokes their childhood licence; not legally a child, ergo not legally a children’s prison
Oh my god that explanation is somehow worse. Thank you for explaining though. Childhood as a license 😱?!
Soon to become CaaS, Childhood as a Service.
Isn’t it better to use natural methods of killing rats? I thought ferrets were natural enemies of rats and thus the perfect way to get rid of them. No poison leeching into the ground or killing things like birds. It’s like using goats instead of lawnmowers.
Having a ferret whose muzzle is covered in feral rat blood cuddling up with traumatized children sounds like the first chapter of The Hantavirus Horde
I don’t know if this is part of the reasoning but ferrets actually have an immune system that is very similar to humans and are used in medical research for that very reason. When I had one I always had to be careful with her when I was sick because she would catch it otherwise. Ferret sneezes are surprising and adorable.
I believe you want sheep instead of goats (bc they destroy everything). And it indeed sounds way logical. Tho maybe rats have diseases that can affect ferrets and after them humans?
Edit: after reading the article - they let the ferrets kill rats in front of the children. Now that’s a different story…Sheep are good for straight grass. Goats are good for weeds and anything else remotely plant-like. Goats more often get used to manage things like road medians and otherwise uncultivated land/hillsides for weed control.
So sheep to mow, Goats to kill weeds and shrubbery! And free fertilizer in meantime. :)
That is certainly a sentence
According to a POA complaint sent to Mark Scott, the institute’s governor, “a rat was cornered and killed within a staff office using domesticated ferrets. This raises significant concerns in relation to animal welfare, health and safety, infection control, and professional conduct.”
“It is particularly concerning that a young individual responsible for the ferrets was present and witnessed the incident. Exposure to such an event is inappropriate and potentially distressing, and warrants review”
Rather than destroy caught rats by approved pest control methods, a manager advised “stomping on them or throwing them against walls”, the union’s complaint said.
Ughhh, what the hell is wrong with people?!
First, how the hell do we still have children’s prison??
Second, not humane to the rats or ferrets.
Third, making the children watch their therapy animal produce/receive gore, wtf? Hey kid, remember Rikki Tikki severing that rat’s jugular? That’s your only comfort in here!
Fourth, who allows their therapy animals to potentially get injured or spread disease? Are these animals not there for calmness, not to be hardening their wild instincts?
Holy hell, these people can’t handle animals, let alone children with issues that need real help and compassion. 😡
I’m curious about what the humane euthanasia guidelines are in this scenario. It’s all just so weird.
Prevention (ie. building maintenance) is the real first step. Rodents want food, warmth, shelter just like we do, so they want to get in places. Remove their access and then nothing needs to get killed, at least not by humans.
Otherwise snap traps are largely considered the most humane, as they’re relatively reliable, and as long as things go as planned they are quick and effective compared to most anything else. Nothing is going to be 100% reliable, hence the right thing to do is not let them in, which again, as they’re housing large numbers of children, should be the priority of a halfway competent staff.
Prevention definitely makes sense. So do snap traps, I just didn’t know if the old school method was considered as painless as possible. I don’t like poisons because of trophic concentration. Not currently dealing with rats but I do want chickens again someday so I’m sure I’ll face this question eventually.
Poisons kill in a pretty ugly way and make their way up the food chain as you said. Snap traps don’t work all the time, but using good ones minimizes the chances of suffering, but it’s still going to happen, that’s just somewhat unavoidable.
I help with wildlife rescue and see the effects of poison on raptors, so I appreciate people not going to poison as a first option.
The problem with snap traps is that rats are clever little bastards. If there’s more than one rat, the survivors quickly learn to avoid the traps if one of their peers gets its neck snapped.
I own a big old house in a place where there are rats in the woods nearby. Closing off every potential rat entry point was a time-consuming pain in the ass, but it was pretty effective once it was finished.
I’m thankful the only rat I ever found was someone’s escaped pet. I enjoy the mice/rats as much as I do most other animals, whereas they just need to stay outside or in the clinic and we get along just fine. I’d rather block holes than hurt them, they’re just doing what they need to do for themselves after all.
