*Hi Emily,
>Germany...they vaccinate them here against Rabies, Distemper and
>Kennel Cough.
*First of all: Ferrets don't need to be vaccinated against Kennel Cough.
Distemper (disease of Carri) is the only one they usually get in Belgium
(where I live) and the Netherlands. I don t know about rabies in
Germany, in Belgium it s not necessary if you don t take your ferret
abroad and don t cross the Samber-Maas-border.
>My vet used the vaccines from Pfizer (good German company!) called
>Vanguard 7 and Enduracell T. I see from their medical passes that in
>the past, they've been vaccinated with a combo from Virbac, another
>German company (I adopted them last year).
*Please never again let your ferrets vaccinate with a Vanguard-vaccine.
There's a strong suspicion of bad reactions (even causing distemper in
stead of preventing it) to Vanguard in ferrets and it should never be
used for them! In fact none of the distemper-vaccines based on
dog-cell-cultures should be used on ferrets. You can use a vaccine based
on chicken-embryo-cell-cultures, like Nobivac puppy DP, Eurican DA2P,
Trivirovax CHP and some others. Personally I prefer Nobivac puppy DP
since this is only against Distemper and Parvo and contains the least
unnecessary products for ferrets. (There is no vaccine containing only
the distemper-product over here).
It s also another reason why I wouldn't like this Vanguard 7 that your
vet used, even if it wasn t based on dog-cell-cultures, it contains:
Lebendes Staupevirus mind. 103.0 GKID50 -->Distemper
Lebendes Adenovirus Typ 2 mind. 103.2GKID50 --> Kennelcough
Lebendes Parainfluenza- virus Typ 5 mind. 106.7 GKID50 --> Parainfluenza
Lebende Parvoviren mind. 107.0 GK1D50 --> Parvo
Leptospira canicola und Leptospira icterohaemorrhagiae mind. je 300 NU
--> Leptospirosis
Your ferret only needs the Distemper part of this, and maybe the
Leptospira part
(there is some fuzz about this, some vets say ferrets don't need this
because there has only been one (experimental) Leptospirosis case in a
ferret, some vets don't want to take the risk, especially when a ferret
goes outside often in an area where there may be rats)
But again, never again let them use Vanguard on your ferrets!
>In any case, there was no pretreating and no post wait. I asked him if
>I needed to wait to make sure there were no reactions like I've done in
>the US and he said no, just call our cell phone if there's a problem,
>and gave me his card with that number on it. I don't know enough German
>yet to ask how often there's a problem. In any case, there were no
>problems, thankfully! Just wanted to share that it doesn't seem to be
>as big of a deal as in the US.
*It is indeed very unusual over here that a ferret shows a bad reaction
to vaccination (when using the right products), I've been wondering
myself why this is such a huge problem in the US (where you have
ferret-specific vaccines, which we don't have over here). One theory
I've read suggests that it's due to the difference between american
ferrets and european ferrets (european ferrets being healthier and closer
to the "genuine" ferret and to the polecat, whereas american ferrets are
most likely weaker and more bred in "fancy colors" *grmbl* we see more
and more (american) DEW's, Panda's, Polka-dots, .... over here too
lately :-( )
>Question - when I was scruffing the girl, he nicked me with the needle
>just a tiny bit and there will a teeny tiny bit of blood. He said he
>pokes himself all the time and there's nothing to worry about. The
>Rabies vaccine here isn't live, but the distemper one is. Can a tiny
>bit of the distemper virus hurt a human, if any of it was on the tip of
>the needle?
*Can't really help you with this. I don't think you should be very
worried though as I'm pretty sure that humans aren't susceptible to
Canine Distemper. If you don t feel comfortable, contact your local
doctor or clinic.
I hope I didn t make too much language-mistakes, as english is only my
third language.
Greetings,
Wendy
[Posted in FML issue 4633]
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