You can have titers run. Ours in the past have been processed at Cornell but I have heard that the Ferret Health Advancement Group at Michigan State might also run them, so your vet can ask on that score. With sufficient titer levels vaccines can be skipped that year. I have links to more on those in this post. To have the immunity foundation all kits need to have their full kit series of vaccines, timed properly. If that has not been done then two distemper virus vaccines are given two to three weeks apart. Without the foundation there typically is not sufficient protection w current vaccines. Distemper is a HORRIBLE way to die. It is common to use Nobivac when Purevax can not be gotten. Some had confused Nobivac with Neovac which does NOT have sufficient testing done to know if it even provides any protection to ferrets. Their own head of research told me himself that Neovac can not be considered at this time to work in ferrets. Some past posts and more with info: This one has some excellent links and info: <https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/ferrethealth/conversations/messages/19749> This study is past but the contact info is still good: http://www.ferret.org/pdfs/titer_study_cornell_form.pdf http://www.ferrethealth.msu.edu <https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/ferrethealth/conversations/messages/16855> <https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/ferrethealth/conversations/messages/20571> <https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/ferrethealth/conversations/messages/20557> There was the possibility that DIM, an exceedingly nasty myofasciitis MGHT have been caused by a contaminant in a type of vaccine that vaccine has not been made for a very extended time. That was ONLY a hypothesis of the cause but as far as I know has never been demonstrated to be accurate or not. Disseminated Myofasciitis arose about a decade ago, and was an often written about (in ferret digests) cause of death for a few years, though it always was rare. Dr. Katrina Ramsell has an excellent medical approach for it, and consults all over when vets might be encountering it. The big thing is to REDUCE the activity of the immune system during that illness. It actually causes white cell counts that were thought to be inconsistent with life before it was documented. The illness itself IS dangerous, do not mistake what I am saying, but the over-reaction of the immune system which it tends to trigger is what usually kills. Usually, it attacks young ferrets, but there have been some older ones with it, and it sometimes recurs in ferrets who have gone into remission. It still is a terribly severe disease even without all ferrets who get it dying. Even in its heyday it was rare and now is exceedingly rare, but with the cause unknown it can not be considered to be gone. It is a horrible illnesses. Among the things that can look like it are meningitis, lymphoma, some types of poisoning, some equally rare often fatal infections, etc. Again it was rare then, but unlikely to ever be forgotten by those of us who lost a ferret to it it, like our Chiclet. See: http://www.miamiferret.org/dimalert.pdf http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23234280 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20682436 http://vet.sagepub.com/content/44/1/25.long [Posted in FML 8134]