From:
Steve Austin
Date: 2003-03-21 19:32:00 UTC
Subject: "ECE-free" shelters
To: ferrethealth@smartgroups.com
Message-ID: <20030321.144135.2080.15.kazpat1@juno.com>
I agree, if ECE is in your area and you shelter you will see it,
no doubt. One ferret can shed it up to 9 months, in my case
6 months later I introduced a new ferret and that ferret
became ill, oddly no one else did after that. I am not a shelter
but do fostering and some rescues.
Unless the shelter closed down for 9 months once they had it,
and then started over, it would be hard to be free of it. Now,
you close down, do everything right and the first surrender
you take in had ECE a few months ago and now you are
exposed all over again. I think if you are having a problem
with every new rescue getting sick with ECE, you may
have to close down for a little. I remember a post awhile
back about someone who couldn't get rid of it, and ended
up throwing out the carpet, and that seemed to work,
most shelters probably have linoleum though, and at least
this can be cleaned well with bleach, parvocide,etc
I think if a shelter never had it, they either are lucky, it is
not so prevelant in their area, or they didn't recognize
it, since some areas see so much ECE it is very possible
many ferrets were exposed and had it as kits, and
just weren't sick with it, or very mild symptoms.
I think ECE is pretty prevalent in NJ, at least a lot
of my friends with ferrets have experienced it in their
own, and most occured after taking home a new
pet store bought ferret, so again I don't think shelters
are the ones to worry about.
Patty
> From my personal experience with ECE and running a
> shelter, I find it difficult to believe that there is
> such a thing as an ECE-free shelter, as Alicia
> mentioned in her post. When we started FURRY in St.
> Louis, we were ECE free for a while, but it didn't
> last. And it seems to me that once you have it, it
> never leaves (at least in a shelter environment, where
> you have some many different ferrets coming and
> going).
> I would be interested to hear other shelter parents'
> experience with this.
>
> Sara & 4 fuzzies
________________________________________________________________
Sign Up for Juno Platinum Internet Access Today
Only $9.95 per month!
Visit www.juno.com