Don’t reinvent the wheel

Selective breeding has turned wild polecats into working ferrets. James Mckay says there’s no need to reverse this

I have tried this with 10 such matings and always had the same results. I then took the polecat/ferret hybrids and crossed them with pure ferrets. I have done this now for 12 generations and still the offspring are skittish and need careful handling from an early age in order to make them handleable.

True, the results of all such matings have given me beautiful, dark and large-headed animals, but they are useless for the task for which I believe ferrets were given to us – rabbiting.

Ideal for rabbiting

I have produced equally good-looking ferrets from simply selectively breeding my ferrets to produce the colour, markings and ‘type’ or body shape and size that I desire. These animals, however, are excellent for rabbiting duties, a prerequisite of any ferret in the Mckay household.

Polecats and their hybrids have many – too many – bad traits to ever be any good for ferreting/rabbiting. Yes, they are faster than most ferrets but maybe too fast; they are in the burrow and on top of the rabbits before the conies have a chance to bolt. If the rabbits don’t bolt – either into nets or for the gun, hawk or dog – then what is the point in ferreting?

As Mrs Beeton said, to make a rabbit pie you must first get your rabbit. A dead rabbit underground is no use whatsoever. Even if the polecat hybrid does bolt a few rabbits from their warren, retrieving the predator will require the patience of Job. Standing around the entrances to warrens trying to catch a recalcitrant hunter is not my idea of sport. I want my ferrets to come to my hand as

“Polecats are skittish, nervous, fast and will avoid human contact if possible – the opposite of what every ferreter demands”

soon as they have finished their subterranean efforts; that means that I can spend more time hunting coney.

I don’t believe that I am alone in my convictions. Our forefathers would have made the same discoveries that I have made over the past decade or so. That was the reason for them domesticating the polecat and selectively breeding out the traits that we, as hunters, found undesirable.

So a plea to all owners of polecats and ferrets – don’t try to reinvent the wheel. We have some superb ferrets and the introduction of wild polecat genes into the domestic ferret gene pool will not give us better ferrets. We may even be creating a time bomb that will have a far from improving effect on our domestic stock.

James Mckay is director of the National Ferret School, Derbyshire

Polecat-type ferrets are not always easy to retrieve once underground