Eudora dropped quote marks on me again in the posts that appeared today! Please, don't confuse my remarks with those of the Killians or of Danielle. Danielle is organizing the farm survey stuff. The Killians were pointing out the problems attached to rescuing retirees. I inserted lines to make it more obvious what was said by another and what was said by me but those went missing in some cases. VERY aggravating bug! It doesn't make any difference if I include entire paragraphs, or if I leave on the "At ------ wrote:" lines, or if I empty all mailboxes first either. Now, I am trying inserting capitalized "Start Quote" and "End Quote" statements. That's why they are there, Bill! I am not schizophrenic, LOL! The reason it sounds like several people wrote what was in those posts was because several people DID, but my program dropped the quote marks/partitions once again. --- Kat: That tree is VERY Victorian of you! --- At 1:45 PM -0500 12/15/01, Risa wrote: >They go to a vet clinic where they can be operated on by people training >to do neuters/spays/descents ? Ok, that doesn't sound great but then >sometimes they are adopted by these vet clinics?! Then what ? Do they >receive unnecessary or explorative surgery? That may not be the case, >but if so then geez, euthanasia starts to sound more positive! > >What a great idea though about a program where shelters adopt the retired >breeders and MF supports them through product donations. (of course I >agree with you, MF should already be supporting shelters regularly. which >would inturn help them if ferrets adopted out were already partial to MF >products). > >Risa As far as i know the most any farm has done for any shelters is that PV has provided food to a few. (Corrections if I am wrong, please...) MF is the ONLY farm I know of that worked toward getting rabies policies toward ferrets changed so that there weren't a pile of them being beheaded to help ferrets, and is the only one I know of which has done work to help improve medical knowledge and care of ferrets so that when your little ones get sick your vet has more and better options for treatment . Maybe the shelters should tackle the other farms --other than PV and MF-- that aren't doing any public service work; it's time those other farms did their fair share. MF and PV are already trying to help, and I expect will help more when asked sweetly, but the others should do so, as well! I suspect that in most cases the training ones are adopted out to loving homes. Remember that vets are in general the most animal-loving people imaginable! Using a ferret for training is not really a bad thing: it gets an op done and saves money at the same time. We used to have some of our's have operations by an excellent vet who would be attended by some others who wanted to learn, and when safe they'd get their hands in there, too. Never lost a ferret to surgery or during post-op days, either. We also had that done with some necropsies. --- thanks for the two pieces of info on ones with spaying problems. [Posted in FML issue 3633]