OK People, heres the news:
 
Histopath is back.
 
The amount of puss at the pharynx was unable to be cultured but high levels
of bacteria were found in the lungs, also found in the lungs were large
amounts of blood where the ferret had "bled out".
 
The Spleen was abnormaly enlared, but we were unable to get any more
information from that.
 
There were no brain lesions, which can be characteristic of distemper,
but....
 
The pathologist did find inclusion bodies in the gastrointestinal tract.
Hence its a very, very good chance that the ferret did have canine
distemper.
 
What probably happened is that the ferret became immune suppressed from
having CD and the abcesses affected him much more than it usually would.  In
this case we were lucky, it means that we caught the disease early and can
do something about it before anymoe strays arrive at the shelter.
 
The fact that it is CD has some good and bad points for us.
 
Good: Most of the permanent resident ferrets are already vacced, and the
disease is identifiable and vaccination does exist.
 
Bad: Some 20 stray and pet ferrets here aren't vaccinated.  We live on a
rural property where we can't get rid of the feral foxes that are
undoubtably spreading the disease.
 
An emergency vaccination schedule has be started using the only safe ferret
CD vacc in the country, Canvac DA2 from CSL.  I'll keep you posted with a
success/mortality rate.
 
We can all learn from this.... GET ALL FERRETS VACCINATED!!!!
 
Thanks for your support.
 
Michael Curry
 
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[Posted in FML issue 2046]