Nikki wrote:
>How could such a breeder continue if there were limit laws or per
>animal fees? Why should breeders HAVE to cut back on their breeding
>stock or litters per year? How is it helping ferrets, ferret owners or
>ferret breeders to cut back on the number of quality ferret litters
>which are born?
Ah, if you had come to the ferret world not long before you did you
would have seen at least five examples of why, cases in which the
breeders did not have the ability to care for the numbers of animals
they had. Just check the archives and other refs. You will read of
places like a barely lit garage stacked with cages, some of the cages
even holding ferrets who died and were never removed (and not just
recent deaths). You would have read of another whose males had high
rates of untreated testicular tumors and the breeder ferrets showed
multiple other no signs of having had no vet care. You would have read
about one breeder who was feeding dead ferrets to the ones left. You
would have read of a place that had not only ferrets but poultry and
had pigs eating the ferret feces below the cages. (Those are zoonotic
risk situations for creating extreme influenzas -- the multiple housing
of species which share influenzas is why China is so often the place
where nasty strains start -- including tracing research on the origin
of the current bird flu strains being watched.) You'd have read of
starving animals. There is so much of which you would have read.
The fact of the matter is that abusive breeders exist in the ferret
world just as they do in the dog and cat world, and in all such cases
they exist in numbers which are too high. For those abusers having no
or lax laws is great. For the animals and for those who add those
animals to their families the lack of good animal welfare and health
laws is a great hardship.
Each of those times marvelous, marvelous shelterers cared for the
ferrets, often taking on great personal financial loss and well as
having to do without sleep. (Just think of the cost of ferrying 100
ferrets, with many sick back and forth to vets, let alone the caging,
bedding, food, litter, medical care itself
The ferret community did without in other ways so that it could dig
into its pockets to fund at least some of the care, but those who run
the shelters and their wonderful volunteers have each time sacrificed
the most to help the ferrets.
Nor are lacks of laws fair to good breeders. When too many bad ones
exist people generalize too greatly and think that most breeders don't
provide vet care, don't clean up fecal matter, don't socialize animals,
etc. Bad breeders hurt good breeders by people lumping them all into
one group. In fact, some of the best opponents to animal abuse whom I
have met in our decades with ferrets have been good breeders. Some of
the worst opponents of animal welfare and purchaser protections have
later turned out over and over again to have major, previously hidden
situations of animal abuse themselves.
>The post was phrased in a way which lead me to believe people were
>being encouraged to say they vacation in Ohio even if they don't.
Notice words like "applicable" in the original post.
>Animal hoarding is a mental health issue. Creating limit laws to stop
>it is like creating laws which ban OCD or other mental illness.
While such laws do not stop the mental illness they DO SAVE THE
ANIMALS. In all honesty, the photos and descriptions from the current
farm under discussion fit well within the definitions and descriptions
of hoarding (numbers of animals well beyond what can be sufficiently
cared for), so I agree that independent assessment makes sense and
suggest that the ASPCA be involved. (BTW, since that farm is no longer
covered by APHIS licensing it has not had independent and favorable
federal inspection.) Having laws -- when they are used right -- allows
the animals to be removed, care to be provided, the people to be barred
from having animals for at least a set period and inspected, and
sometimes mental health care is court mandated. In at least one
situation the person turned out to also be an elder abuser so the
prosecution for the animal abuses also helped save humans because of
the court notice and the mental health care required. Most of us set
the limits of how many animals we have according to how much time we
have and what we can afford in terms of vet care, space, etc. Hoarders,
whether they call themselves pet owners, rescuers, breeders, or farms
do not self-regulate. No matter what term THEY use, they still boil
down to hoarding abusers and ultimately the animals suffer the most
then. Not all states have good hoarding protection, especially if
certain umbrellas are used to protect the person, such as the word
"farm" in some states, and the type of districting (residential,
agricultural, etc. also comes into play with whether and how much
health departments can be involved).
>You say shades of gray - well what is ok restrictions in your mind?
>Restrictive laws often leads to more extreme restrictive laws - a
>slippery slope I guess you'd say.
Sufficient veterinary care, no piles of fecal matter, a certain square
footage per animal, a certain number of workers per set numbers of
animals, water that is not frozen, protection from weather extremes,
etc. are all examples of things that can be mandated so that the
numbers are determined by CONDITIONS. In other words, people who really
can care for the animals can have them, but those who can not provide
care would need to stay within number limits they can care for well
enough. That is the way many animal protection laws are written, and
they WORK! The problem is one of DEGREE, rather than one of absolutes.
Absolutes tend to create trouble. Laws that are well written don't
lead to slippery slopes.
Bill Killian wrote:
>You have long let people get a free shot at me unfairly, this is not
>something new for you.
Uhuh, Bill, Bill Gruber does that to anyone whose posts relate to a
specific individual's comments if enough controversy and direct quotes
are involved. He's done it to me (and I think completely fairly and
with the group's best interests in mind) when I have forgotten to copy
those people (which I won't mess up on this time). Bill Gruber does
this to and for us all. If I hadn't copied you and Nikki he'd be
passing this one on, so I have copied you both. I think that the name
calling which has now started up (and in which I am not engaging) has
escalated things and put Bill Gruber in an uncalled for awkward
position as moderator.
BTW, have you or are you planning to up your page on how to save kits
when mothers can't care for them once again? There was someone who
needed that info about a half year ago to a year ago to help some kits
but the site didn't come up. If it is up again, please, provide the
URL.
[Posted in FML 5545]
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