Tracy, I'm sorry to say but your vet is wrong. Vaccination reactions happen all over the country. Just becuase he has never seen it does not mean that you should not have a care. Please listen to the experience of people who have nearly lost, and in some cases *did* lose their ferrets to reactions. I have had two ferrets have reactions now, one who will not get his distemper vaccination again because he's reacted twice, despite pretreating. Please use the numerous ferret resources on the net and research the subject and give the info to your vet, who is obviously not aware of the risk. It is a relatively small risk, but it is a risk. You may NEVER have a reaction, and we all hope you don't, BUT, one reaction, one time, can kill. I have experienced it, many other people here have experienced it, and we can tell you that specialist or not, your vet is wrong and it DOES happen. I would hope that you would want to be safe rather than sorry. No, you don't need to stay up all night and watch them. I did have a VERY unusual situation where a reaction was delayed by several hours (we're not sure why, but after extensive searching it was the only thing he *could* have reacted to), but that's VERY rare, I've never heard of another long delay. My reccomendation would be, like with a small child, to not worry, but plan for a nice night in, so on that one in a million chance that something bizzare like what happened to me happens, you're home. But it's safe to say that reactions mostly happen within the first hour. Stay at the vet (take a book or something to do) for at LEAST 45 mintues (there have been many stories posted here about people staying the recomended 30 minutes and the ferrets started having reactions on the way home, or just when they got home...I had a case like that too.) More importantly, educate your vet. The talk and warnings are not because it IS going to happen, but because IF it happens, a ferret can die. I think most people never have problems, your vet hasn't seen it, my vets hadn't heard of it either, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't take a little extra time to ensure a bit of safety :-) on how many ferrets: 3 is good...I have 5, lots of people have more. But the important thing to remember is...how many can you care for? If you feel that you can only handle two, then two is the right number :-) I responded to the original post privately, and I agree that for the benifit of the ferrets, three is better than two. But, as things can often be taken wrong here, I don't want people to get the impression that if they can't afford three or take care of three, they shouldn't have two (though I'm sure some of you would be of that opinion). What you DO want to avoid is getting more than you can handle and then not wanting to have any at all! Most people I think would think that three is not that much more work than two, but that may not be the case for everyone. However many you have, enjoy! Sue M. [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] [Posted in FML issue 3458]