My new ferret fights over food..anyone else had this problem?

Question

We have four animals, 2 ferrets, 1 cat and, 1 dog. I notice yesterday that our new member, the younger ferret, was standing in the food bowl, fighting off all the other animals. When we bought her, she was being feed the soft ferret foods. Here we feed her hard foods(she soon discovered she loves the hard food). We have a 2 year old ferret who gets along very well with our younger one during play, sleep, and whatever they like to do, except for feeding. They have been inseparable since we brought the little one home. We leave them out during the day while we are home to stretch and play, so we leave a food bowl out for them. Ally(our young one) was biting and pushing the others away, she tended to be more aggressive to Boots(our older one). Ally only scared away the cat and dog, she didn't fight them. I have been reading on this problem, and the only thing I could find was that ferrets are not territorial (that info. obviously didn't answer my question lol). Yea, if anyone knows what I could do, or how to remedy this, please let me know. I hope I gave enough detail, if not I will add foot notes.

Answer 1

naughty ferrets

Answer 2

unusual behavior for a little ferret, that's for sure. makes me wonder if the place you got her from limited the food they gave, causing her to feel protective of what she had.

is she successful at driving the older one away from the food? if so, that's dangerous to Boots, since a ferret's high metabolism dictates they eat quite often. Ally's behavior - if she's able to keep the older one from eating when needed - could become a health issue for Boots if it means Boots isn't able to eat as frequently as needed. how many food bowls do you have out? you can't really separate them to eat since they graze all day long, but maybe strategically placing several bowls around the area will help, if it lets Ally feel less threatened of potentially losing dinner when another animal walks by. this may mean having 3 or four food bowls for the ferrets (placed far enough apart that Ally won't get protective of all of them at the same time) so each ferret can have a choice of which bowl eat from without the worry of getting hurt.

you may want to seek out a ferret shelter in your area for help - they often have many many ferrets in at any one given time and have probably see every kind of behavior imaginable. the people who run them are usually pretty helpful with problems, and would bend over backwards to help a ferret & its owner. they might have additional things you can do to help curb this kind of behavior.