tetanus/DtaP for child around livestock?

[smellyann82]

I have a 5.5 yo dd and 2 yo ds.  Both spend time every day in a big community garden run by my brother, particularly around chickens and rabbits, and gads of horse manure as fertilizer.  DH and I are strongly considering the DTaP for both at their checkups in 2 weeks for the tetanus component.  The area where we spend time and garden is not child-proofed or clean.  It is a large working community garden/urban farm.  We garden there as a family and it is a part of our daily life.  I feel, in this case, that the risk of a wound that would cause concern outweighs the risk of vaccine reaction for either of them.  I'm looking from educated opinions of others who have made these calls for their children.  FYI, neither child has been vaccinated at all (which is also another reason I'm feeling more comfortable with this one vaccine.  They do not have weakened immune systems or a build up of toxins from prior vaccination).  Our thoughts toward vaccines is that we will only use them if traveling internationally to a place where disease is a concern, or this concern about tetanus.  My thought is that if we were ever to need to seek medical attention for a wound sustained in the garden (we've been to urgent care/ER for each of them more than once for small injuries, so I feel like, from experience, it isn't a small chance...they're kids, they play hard, they very likely will get hurt at some point) that their no-tetanus vaccine status will become a major medical concern by the medical professionals caring for our children. 

Any thoughts/research appreciated. 

[Marnica]

I have unvaccinated 3yo. I have often thought about tetanus.

Tetanus is more about improper wound care than anything else. If your children are otherwise healthy (no diabetes or other problems that cause circulatory issues) I honestly do not feel that a DTaP is warranted at all. I assume that your children wear shoes when they are running about this garden?

If I absolutlely felt that I HAD to have protection from tetanus, even given the extremely remote chance that my child would sustain a wound that was TRULY at risk for tetanus, I would NOT get the DTaP. I would get the pediatric DT.

In the words of the late Dr. Mendelshon " The tetanus vaccine over the decades has been progressively weakened in order to reduce the considerable reaction (fever and swelling) it used to cause. Accompanying this reduction in reactivity has been a concomitant reduction in antigenicity (the ability to confer protection). Therefore, there is a good chance that today’s tetanus vaccine is about as effective as tap water."

There is no convincing evidence that this vaccine contributed to the decline in tetanus. It declined sharply between 1900 and the late 1940's at which time it rare to begin with (0.4 cases per 100,000) before the vaccine was introduced. The fact that it continued to decline after routine vaccination is not proof that the vaccine is the reason IMO, it may have continued to decline on it's own without the vaccine. The tetanus vaccine has never actually been tested for efficacy in any clinical trial. It's efficacy is "inferred"