We recently found new homes for our four ferrets.  Shortly after arriving at
their new home, they all got sick.  At first the local vets thought that it
was a stress induced infection.  Well, Twinkie seemed to get better and then
woke up one morning paralyzed and showing signs of anemia.  Unfortunately,
he passed onto the rainbow bridge.  All of their other ferrets are
completely fine.  Pretzel, our youngest got over the initial infection
without any problems and is back to his normal ferret self.  Pickle and Kit
Kat have lost alot of weight and Kat has lost hair and grinds her teeth.
The local vets referred Pickle and Kat to another vet with more ferret
experience and he thought the symptoms most closely matched canine distemper
or lead poisoning.  (Stool cultures ruled out ulcers and three ferrets
coming down with tumors at the same time is statistically unlikely.)  Allof
our ferrets were vaccinated with Fervac-D and Dr. Hudson has said that their
has been alot of problems with this vaccine.  After reading on the 'net,
the symptoms (diarrhea, lethargy, nausea, and CNS symptoms) really seem to
match what our ferrets have experienced but I thought canine distemper was
100% fatal in ferrets!  Have any of you heard where a vaccine has provided
partial immunity to distemper?
 
Thanks for any help.  We are just trying to make sense of this illness in
our three fuzzies, and if it does turn out to be distemper, then something
needs to be done about approving a more reliable vaccine for our ferrets.
 
Heather Hildebrandt
Environmental Engineer
NC DEHNR/DAQ
PO Box 29580
Raleigh, NC 27626-0580
[log in to unmask]
(919) 733-1498
FAX (919) 733-1812
[Posted in FML issue 2298]