Just like dogs in puppy mills, ferrets endure hell on filthy breeding farms. Those born in these squalid facilities are sold into the pet trade or to laboratories, where they’re used in crude and painful experiments. When a PETA investigator went undercover at a ferret-breeding farm in Pennsylvania, they found horrific cruelty and suffering. Ferrets were kept in small cages with dangerous wire floors, deprived of any opportunity to engage in natural behavior such as burrowing and hiding, and often deprived of food and water. Newborn, young, and adult animals were routinely denied veterinary care, even for life-threatening injuries and conditions. Owners, supervisors, and workers at the breeding mill left ferrets with bleeding rectal prolapses, gaping wounds, infected feet, herniated organs, painful mammary gland infections, and ruptured eyes to suffer and die without providing them with adequate veterinary care. Never buy ferrets—or any other animal—from pet stores, which sell ferrets who were raised in these disease-ridden, factory farm-like conditions. Doing so only funds the further breeding and exploitation of these intelligent animals. Is It Legal to Own a Ferret in California? It’s illegal to possess ferrets in California and Hawaii as well as in a number of cities, townships, and counties where they’re considered a non-native or an “invasive” species. These laws serve to protect local wildlife, whose food supply and habitats would be impacted when ferrets exploited and bred for profit inevitably escaped or