Behaviour

There is a lot to be said on the topic of mink behaviour, mainly because we feel that people have the wrong impression of the animal. Anyone we talk to thinks that the mink is an aggressive animal that will bite anything to death that it gets a grip on. They also think that the mink is unmanageable. This opinion is shared by some if not all mink breeders in the country. The breeders we approached, 15 in total, said that the mink was an unmanageable killer, which was impossible to tame, just like polecats. It was not our intention to try and tame a mink, only to put it in with our raccoon, so we did not know what we had started. The reason we got a baby mink was that we already had experience with raccoons and skunks and we thought we knew what we were doing. We were amazed at the bond which grew between out daughter and the mink, called Snoopy. The two of them are still inseparable and Snoopy is already an adult. The first 8 weeks of Snoopy’s life, my wife and I only cleaned her run  and fed her. Our daughter Jill (now 6), dealt with the rest of her education. Maybe the reason that we now have a mink as a pet is because Jill was so closely involved with the Snoopy.

A mink is active during the day and at night, only taking short naps.

The Mink is a playful animal and is very similar in its games to the otter. They are also real swimmers and can be found in the water (whenever possible) for the most part of the day. Our mink enjoys diving for objects thrown into the water. They are, by nature, very inquisitive and enterprising and as they only take small naps, they are active for most of the day. This behaviour can also be seen on the farms, because as soon as you stand in front of a row of cages all of the mink will stand up to see what is going on. You often read about stereotypical behaviour of mink in mink farms, but I have seen little evidence of this. Maybe the mink really go mad in these cages, however, the only thing we saw was normal, even playful behaviour.

A mink is an extremely clean animal and spends a lot of time cleaning itself and is also very easy to housetrain because they only use one place as a toilet. A thing that also appeals to us in the minks behaviour is the response they give you when you challenge them to play, and that love is not conditional (i.e. based on you being the food provider), which is the case as regards the raccoon and the skunk. One thing we do find annoying is that our mink is very timid which means we cannot let her out when we have guests that she does not know.

Our family and those who have met our mink are all very impressed with the behaviour of the mink and there are people that think that it is a cross between an otter and a ferret. We hope that more people get to know mink in a different light and that they really find out that there is more to a mink than an unmanageable killer.