>From: "marie i. schatz" <[log in to unmask]> >Subject: Marshal Farms >I'll be right up front and say that I'm an animal mill hater. That said >I'll try to stick to what seem to be the facts and then explain why I >dislike mills. We'll stick to our statement that when you use the term mill to describe the truly bad puppy and kitty mills you shouldn't use that same term to describe the better ferret ranches. They have very little in common. There certainly are ferret mills but Marshall is not one of them. You can still choose to dislike ferret ranches and ferret mills. >If (this is by far from exact) , under artificial lighting you could >say get a female ferret to breed 4 litters a year, and each female had >say 8 kits live and they produce 80,000 the math comes to......2,500 >females plus some males, plus the kits that are around for up to 6 >weeks. A pretty big operation. Pretty wearing on the females too It would be very wearing on the jills if it was true. But its not. I'll guarantee you that. Read the Fox book more carefully than the ranter that started the rumor about so many litters a year and you'll see that primaparous only jills get the extra litters in a year. That is the first breeding year they MIGHT get three. Normally two in 12 months. but that really isn't two a year. The second year they get 1 litter but its sooner than 12 months after the last from the year before. Yes we got that information directly from Marshall Farms. And yes I believe Dr. Bell who gave us that information. >Marshal Farms is just the biggest and most well known so most people Not most people. We shouldn't demean the ranches by making them out to be that identical. >That said I don't like any type of breeder, small, large, dog, cat, >bunny, ferret etc. that breeds a COMPANION animal for profit. I feel the opposite. I wish that it was profitable to breed companion pets while doing it "right" so that we'd have professionals that could devote their entire time to the animals rather than squeezing them in after they get home from their real jobs. You point out a whole list of problems but I come to the opposite conclusion. It would be better if the breeder could afford the time to do the things you say aren't done. If they have to be amateurs then they have other jobs to prevent them doing it the way you yourself think they should. That shipping container doesn't sound too bad really. Think about how much space a human really gets on a Greyhound bus travelling across the country. Its less proportionally. Ferrets do not need food every couple hours. If they had more water available you'd merely have it spilled and end up with wet uhappy ferrets that would be more prone to disease from wet conditions. There isn't a wonderful answer - just not as bad. The chips were probably aspen. If they used cloth it would NOT be as healthy for the kits. The aspen will absorb more water yet remain "dry" to the ferrets than cloth which gets wet and stays wet. The wood will absorb the unavoidable urine far far better than cloth. A pellet bedding would get out of the cage far more than the larger size chips. Things that are bad in one situation just might be good in another. I'd advise you to drop the hatred and view the situation objectively. While you filter everything through hate you will not be able to achieve results in improving conditions. I'm quite serious in this. Marshall Farms will immediately ignore just about everything you have to say because you start off with the statement that you hate them and consider them akin to the midwest puppy mills. At a puppy mill you have too many animals crammed into a yard with no veterinary care whatsoever. Animals are bred until they die. Food stuffs are minimal - just enough to keep the dogs alive but not enough to thrive. The dogs they produce are "junk" by breed standards. For example their pomeranians are way too large because it makes it easier to breed more. On the other hand, Marshall's food while not in our opinion as good as Totally Ferret is a good food. They developed it to produce the best ferrets that they could. They designed it for their own use and then turned it into a product. There is no other entity in the world that knows as much about ferrets as Marshall Farms. Read how much of the information (particulary the old edition) in the Fox book comes from Marshall Farms. That shows that Marshall is doing the research on ferrets. -bill -- bill and diane killian zen and the art of ferrets http://www.zenferret.com/ mailto:[log in to unmask] [Posted in FML issue 2715]