From:
"Sukie Crandall"
Date: 2009-06-17 17:02:30 UTC
Subject: [ferrethealth] Re: The importance of vaccinations
To: ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com
--- In ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com, Caitlyn Martin <caitlynmmartin@...> wrote:
>
> Hi, everyone,
>
> I received a few e-mails from people advising me not to vaccinate my
> ferrets at all and telling me how much greater the risk of the
> vaccinations are than the diseases. Folks, IMNSHO that is absolutely
> awful advice!
>
> Distemper is nearly 100% fatal in ferrets and is a truly horrible
> death. So long as my ferrets go out of the house they are at risk.
Yes, I strongly agree. Only someone who has never seen rabies or
distemper in any animals would not understand what nightmares
those illnesses are, and even people who have not seen those
illnesses should understand that.
We are going with the titer route.
There is a chance that individuals who have developed strong and
very effective responses to a previous vaccine are more likely to
have vaccine reactions, so knowing who has high numbers allows
a person to delay a distemper vaccine (keeping in mind that the
actual optimal number for ferrets is not known yet until the
second half of studies is done but that possibly decent guesses
can be made from the numbers of other species).
In our case looking at their numbers only one of our ferrets
obviously needed to be vaccinated and two had high enough
numbers that they may have been at increased risk of a
reaction.
Now, that can NOT be done for the rabies vaccinations but it is
an option for canine distemper vaccinations.
See:
http://www.ferret.org/news/07-april-titer_study.html
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/FHL9127
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/FHL9108
Stopping vaccines all together without cause is rather like "throwing
out the baby with the bath water": an over-reaction of a different
type.
Sukie (not a vet)
Recommended ferret health links:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
http://www.afip.org/ferrets/index.html
http://www.miamiferret.org/
http://www.ferrethealth.msu.edu/
http://www.ferretcongress.org/
http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml
http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html
all ferret topics:
http://listserv.ferretmailinglist.org/archives/ferret-search.html
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