From:
"Kevin Farlee"
Date: 2011-06-18 16:44:40 UTC
Subject: [ferrethealth] Re: Distemper vaccine ??
To: <ferrethealth@yahoogroups.com>
I'm writing up a fuller account, but I need to get my hands on a spreadsheet
that one of the volunteers put together documenting every ferret, their
vaccination history, breeder, location within the shelter, etc. etc. Our
whole intent is to help everyone, including ourselves, learn as much as
possible from this unfortunate situation.
To specifically answer the questions which have come up:
We regularly gave a booster distemper shot to ferrets coming into our
shelter. We've been using Purevax since Fervac-D went away when United
folded.
Many if not most of the ferrets in the shelter (and thus, those who got
sick) were vaccinated. There were some who were deemed to be a risk for
reactions, frail health, etc. which were not up to date. We're re-thinking
the idea of excluding ferrets. One of my personal ferrets had a violent
reaction as a kit, and has never had so much as a sneeze since when
regularly vaccinated.
The highest correlation we can make at this time is that most of the ferrets
coming into our shelter (as with many others) never completed their kit
series. We have some rather dramatic stories of the difference this makes.
In one particular instance, two cage-mates, one for which we have
documentation of the full kit series, the other of which we do not. The
ferret for which we do not have evidence of a complete kit series came down
with distemper. We discovered him with full-blown symptoms - flushed skin,
sticky-gummy eyes, etc. His cage-mate (who did get the kit series) was
grooming his face. Think about it: There just isn't much higher level of
exposure without injecting concentrated virus. That cage-mate never showed
a symptom.
As to our current status, we are now preparing to re-open. We're having a
re-training session to teach volunteers the revised, more stringent
protocols for isolation etc.
We've done PCR tests on over half the ferrets in the shelter, and all are
negative, and there has not been a symptomatic ferret in close to a month.
Overall, considering the shelter itself and a couple of related households
where it got loose, we've had about a 60% survival rate, which is something
I'm pretty proud of. Much of this is due to the work of Debbi & Vondelle,
but also to a protocol which we were referred to, being investigated by a
vet in Texas. It involves high-dose injectable vitamin A (which is
ridiculously expensive) and interferon. This protocol pulled many ferrets
back from full-blown symptoms to full health, testing negative for the virus
via PCR.
I hope this answers most of the current questions, and we will be putting
together and publishing as much as we can as fast as we can get it together
along with the rest of the chaos.
Kevin Farlee
Washington Ferret Rescue & Shelter
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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