Helga- This sounds improbable if not impossible. ADV would not as a normal rule appear and kill five days post-exposure. It seems that ferrets are living several YEARS post exposure to ADV! As many FML'ers know, Yvonne DeCarlo and I have split the Fuzztek shelter into two parts. Her home is a sanctuary for lifetime care of ADV infected ferrets, while my home continues to operate as a "normal" shelter. We do a few things differently now though. Any ferret who comes in is tested for ADV. They are kept in strict quarantine with a separate play area, separate litter scoops, cages, pans, everything. We only handle these ferrets after we are done with our personal and regular shelter ferrets. After we have the results of the testing, if they are positive they will be sent to Yvonnes, and any areas they have had any possible contact with will be sanitized with Synphenol-3. Otherwise they will finish their 10 day quarantine and then be added to the ferret room. Now, how does this relate to ADV and MF? Yvonne and I have now tested over 100 ferrets. NO cases of ADV have been found in MF ferrets except for ones that were obviously infected by cagemates who were from a breeders with known cases of ADV! Now, I am NOT a big fan of MF. But, I will say that their ferrets are generally great pets with great temperments. And they don't seem to have a problem with ADV. As Marshall's is a "closed colony", in that they don't have visitors, don't buy new breeding stock from all over the place, etc., the chances of them having an ADV problem is pretty small. As they are the primary institutional breeder and supplier of laboratory ferrets in the US, which is a large business unit for them, they are rightfully concerned about the quality of the health of their animals for the short term. (I am going to stop short here, as this is NOT an animal rights post.) This brings me to another note, how the ferrets get from MF to the pet stores. In most areas, there are animal wholesalers who buy large lots of animals from institutional breeders and distribute them to the pet stores. Many of these wholesalers have less than satisfactory conditions, with a variety of animals confined together in one small space. Many of these wholesalers will purchase stock from more than one place. So a given wholesaler might have a cage of ferrets containing ferrets from MF, Path, and any number of smaller insitutional breeders who "sell to pet stores". Yvonne and I have been able to track one "mystery case" of ADV back through pet store, distributor and then back to the breeder, who was from the central part of the US. So as you can see, that one ferret could have in fact infected dozens of others from the time it left the breeder until the time it arrived in it's new families home. I would advise people who are going to purcahse a ferret at a pet store to first think of adopting from a shelter :-) OK, if you want to buy from a pet store, I would advise you to ask the MANAGER of the store if the ferrets come directly from MF, or if they come through a distributor. If they are directly from MF, you are pretty safe. Otherwise, you might want to steer clear. You might even want to call MF to verify. By the same token, if you are adopting from a shelter or buying from a breeder, you might want to ask for proof of ADV status. Remember, ferrets younger than 4 months don't have reliable test results, instead ask to see the Sire and Dam's results. I also urge all breeders who offer stud service to offer proof of their results on the hob, and require proof of the Jill's results before breeding the pair. When you bring a new ferret into the house, no matter WHERE it is from, you should ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS quarantine it from your existing ferrets for 5-10 days. This is particularly true if the existing ferrets are mature and the new ferret is young. ADV should not cause a panic, but it should also not be taken lightly. With proper precautions and common sense, it can pretty easily be avoided. Anne [Posted in FML issue 3015]