Hi Randy. So glad you are posting your observations in this forum. Many others have noticed the same things. We should ALWAYS question things. Always. Sometimes, yup, facts get mixed up with rumor or there are exaggerations in some reports. We need to always sort the truth out. But while doing so, do not loose site of the fact that even if some things aren't true in a situation, that does not change the countless other things that are true or change the general picture, ya know? Okay so on to my two cents on your observations. I'm not denying the things you listed could be untrue. I'm just going to give the other side and possibilities drawn from my experience. Can a ferrets eye get so infected it looks like they exploded? I have an eye phobia so thank goodness I've never seen such a thing. However, that said, I do know dogs can get horrific looking eye conditions and have seen those on TV (before I had enough time to look away). Infections that push their eyes almost clear out of the sockets. Infections that make the eyes die off. Infections can make other tissues on the body "explode" for a lack of a better word. That we do know. During the worst of infections, tissue will either fissure or tear so the infected fluids can come pouring out). The way they worded things, leads the reader to beleive the eyes did absolutely explode. And that's wrong to do that because they don't know what caused the post condition they saw the eyes in. Now did they mean to use the text just to be descriptive of their appearance? Who knows, but they did it wrongly. In the case of the "tools" used for neutering. I'd never believe what was reported at Triple F for a second before I saw video tape of a Rainbow Exotics employee neutering a rabbit. I would have never believed before that a place would assign any inexperienced yahoo off the street to conduct surgery.I would have never believed they'd use things such as razors, time after time on a succesion of animals (so you'd know they'd have to be dull). Like you said, it'd be dangerous to the handler and it'd be very difficult and uncomfortable for them as well. I never would have believed tales of people neutering an animal without or with very little anestesia on a dirty workbench like thing before. Well, we saw those everyone of those things on video tape straight out of Rainbow. I did sit and watch that video. It was validated and aired on CNN. Now? I'd beleive anything. Rainbow was considered "reputable". I'm with you in that I don't get the whole "heat issue" here regarding ferrets and their intolerance to heat. That said, and despite me almost loosing one of my babies from heat stroke just from being outside with me for a bit (it was only like 90 or less), rescuers have seen ferrets survive incredible heat well into the digits reported at Triple F farms. The Doug McKay farm ferrets were in the sun outdoors in Ohio year after year. Thousands lived through Eastern heat waves that topped 100 degrees. One of my ferrets was rescued in a back yard in Jersey when it was reported to be 98 degrees that day by animal control (Jersey and Philly get incredible heat waves). The question is how many die from it before we find the numbers that survive it? For example how many ferrets die off in such conditions before we find the survivors.. There are 6000 ferrets in Triple F. But thousands may have been lost and accepted as regular loss before we found the 6000. I guarantee you they didn't start with 6000 and end up with 6000. I know many, many ferrets died at DMK's regularly. The strongest survived. Also most ferrets didn't live until older ages there. So, hope that offers you some answers. Oh, juuuuuuuuuust a little thing to slip in there regarding the whole "farm debate" that centers around this event. Many ferrets were exposed to the same horrors at Rainbow Exotics as Triple F because there was a demand for ferrets that did not come from the huge ferret farms such as Triple F. PetSmart fueled a major demand for them. Why?? Because they wanted to please ferret lovers and do the responsible thing by boycotting large farms such as Marshalls and instead sell "well taken care of private bred ferrets". They tried to do the right thing. The responsible and "politically correct thing". Well, what many of us here warn others about is that by completely shutting down "all" borderline places farms (not places such as Triple F or Rainbow), is that we will get much worse and crueler situations that we canNOT monitor or track. It's a fact. It's also a fact that consumer demand will not change. We may have never found these poor suffering souls at Triple F, had they not been on the radar. It took a year to shut down DMK. A private breeder who also bred thousands of animals. Why? They weren't under the class and under the same eyes as Triple F. Triple F was exposed and action was taken by authorities. It WILL be shut down or radically changed in a much shorter time that DMK was... who by the way was never "shut down" or "changed". Ferret people solved that issue and ferret people alone. He was nearly untouchable by law. I'm torn on this and always will be. Both sides of this argument are "true". I like to weigh both sides and am not on either. I just thought I'd point out that this is an incredible example of the one side's argument. Wolfy [Posted in FML 7177]