The maintenance of skunks as household pets by the general public should be emphatically discouraged by the veterinary profession due to their pugnacious behavior and their ability to inflict serious injury via bites and scratches. There is a lack of an approved vaccine for routine rabies vaccination. The lack of a common sense approach by Public Health Officials with regards to skunk bites and scratches usually results in the death of the pet when humans are injured. The Striped Skunk has been the species most often maintained as a pet and a research animal. Accordingly, most of the information discussed below applies to the Striped Skunk.
Most pet skunks share the same environment as their owner.
The animals may be placed in a basket, a galvanized cage or an air kennel for housing. Almost all skunks readily adapt to a litter pan by the time they are purchased. Most owners usually allow their skunks to have supervised access to their entire premises. Adult skunks usually must be housed separately due to aggression. Siblings may be housed together until they are approximately four months of age.