Are you next?

[debilorrah]

Being a rabbit breeder myself, I know a breeder that personally knows this lady. She is a reputable breeder, with plenty of ventilation and living conditions are not deplorable. The dead rabbits were kits, aged between 2-4 weeks old, which any rabbit breeder knows is the age that they are prone to die if their digestive tract is not developed properly.

She IS preparing to sue because these animals, her INCOME, were taken from her with one anonymous phone call to animal control. The barn floor was a mess due to a storm the prior day, but the rabbits do no live on the floor.

Take care making assumption based on a article on the internet.

ETA: I have not read the comments, just going by what my friend told me. Gotta go back and read now.

 

[CityGirlintheCountry]

Can she not get her rabbits back? Again, I'm sure some will be stressed beyong belief from being pulled from their home in this heat, but surely she could get some back?

 

[debilorrah]

Quote:
As of right now, no. She needs to go to court and I can tell you that courtroom will be PACKED with her supporters, many of whom have purchased their own show stock from her. There are also quite a few in the area that purchase meat rabbits from her already processed. I hope she sues the pants off of them and wins enough to at least get her started back up again!

 

[breezy]

Im sure I wont be popular for this but since Im not well liked now I guess it wont make any difference. In the state of Colorado you MUST be state licensed by PACFA and inspected if you are operating any animal based business. You must apply for the license,meet criteria for sanitation,housing feed,water ect. You must keep accurate records on animal placements/sales deaths. Your animals cannot be sold prior to a certain age which is dependant on the species.. There were dead animlas in that shed. There were dehydrated animals in that shed as well. I live in Arvada and the word I got was that there had been some things that had happened and this poor woman was simply overwhelmed and that is why she cooperated so fully. SHe was trying her best and nobody including animal control is saying anything else... but she was in trouble and so were the rabbits. If you choose to do any animal business in Colorado including the breeding ,showing ect. of animals then you must abide by the laws of this state. We are the only state who has this type of licensing and while it may be a complete PITA at times it wasnt put in place to simply be another goverment issue. It came about as the result of dog deaths at grooming salons, small animal deaths at the hands of careless breeders and completely irresponsible breeders of both cats and dogs. It came about to protect animals that were dying in pet stores,boarding facilities and all animal based businesses. I know this because I was there in the beginning when this legislation was first proposed and I was there fighting for legislation that was fair and reasonable for the business owner and fair and HUMANE for the animals. Please understand that I am not a fan of government and their control issues, but before people assume this was a simple case of the local authorities going all Big Brother please remember that there were laws broken and no one is above the law.

 

[StevenW.]

If it was me I would already be sueing because the rabbits she had were very costly. They were lacking pictures of the actual dead rabbits. They also said the deaths were in the single digits. (Well why the heck couldn't they say how many were dead?) They also never had any pictures of where the rabbits were housed other than a picture of the shed and not the inside.

If I lived closer I would be supporting this woman because the report lacks evidence and pictures.

 

[debilorrah]

The report is lacking many, many facts. She never said she was overwhelmed, in fact she is really quite ticked off right now. People can make all the assumptions they want to from the article. Bottom line is I know someone who personally knows Ms. Strickland and they report is a bunch of hogwash.

 

[punk-a-doodle]

I was able to watch the video and read the comments, but my opinion hasn't changed much. Completely insufficient information. It sounds like there are a lot of people who know her, and that she has a positive image in the community, so I hope they do speak out and bring forth evidence of what they know. Some people were saying that some of the dead rabbits were taken from a freezer (again, no way for me to know one way or the other) meant for zoo food. We used to get in breeder culls for our animals (VERY helpful to get free or cheap meat for our animals, and a useful way to do culling where culled animals don't go to waste), so it would not surprise me at all if she did have bunnies in the freezer. Not reporting that the dead animals were taken from a freezer and why would be incredibly misleading of the media, and I hope they would get strung up for that if that is the case. As it is, they provided absolutely no information about the dead animals, which is definitely misleading at best. The shelter worker clips put me off a bit honestly. I know nothing of this particular shelter, but just in general, I have witnessed several shelters and rescues make a huge deal of high publicity cases as it means more money (through adoptions) and publicity for their facility. If they took advantage of this situation, I hope they are also held accountable for doing so. Again, if the conditions were 'deplorable', I can not understand why they did not show them in the video clip since they were filming everything else. I did not see a 'shed', I saw a barn with proper add-ons. I did not see rabbits that looked like they had been pulled from cages deep in feces. I saw drop pans, and I saw white rabbits with zero staining on their fur. I saw an angora with no noticeable matting or debris in the fur. ...Did they wash and brush these rabbits before loading them up? Definitely brings the accusations to question, especially since I'd assume these would be the worst cases they would show. It sounds like the rabbits were handled poorly after seizure if the reader comments have truth to them, which may give the owner quite a big leg to stand on.

On the other side, not having food I can understand (as far as pellets go, though I do think hay should be always available), and if the rabbits were not thin, then I don't understand why that would be a complaint. But, I didn't see anyone dispute that the rabbits didn't have access to water, just that they weren't without it for long. That does bother me. I think those are the only two things that seem credible at this point to me personally. Lacking access to water and lacking required permits seem to be what would hold some weight if they proved to be true. However, cruelty seems like a ridiculous charge to try to push for if the rabbits they showed were those in 'deplorable' conditions. Hoarding seems to be in the public eye more and more (there is a TV show about it, yes?), and throwing around terms like that without having even a basic grasp on what hoarding entails is ridiculous and damaging, in my opinion. The media saying that this is a case of hoarding because there were 200 rabbits hurts my brain. Ultimately though, just not much to go on though for someone out of state. I'm glad these were not just pets, as breeders tend to have more connections and more back up to fight these accusations.

 

[StevenW.]

When we use to breed rabbits we would only give them pellets in the morning and evening when it was cool or they wouldn't eat the pellets during the day and they would go to waste.
Another reason we also only fed them morning and night because we had a rabbit that died because he kept eating and eating. We quickly learned only to have food at certain times and they quickly caught onto the time schedule we had.

But them not haveing water 24/7 is not good BUT maybe she works crazy hours and can only feed and water because of her work schedule?

 

[Celtic Hill]

Animal rights people stick their heads in the wrong places, If animal rights people actually had people that KNOW ANIMALS then maybe we wouldn't have an issue.

 

[shelleyd2008]

The article says that the rabbits were without food or water?? If it was 84 degrees in the shed, I think water is probably a necessity. Food, on the other hand, they can live without. I've got 3 doelings in a cage that probably don't have food half the day because they spill it, but they are growing and getting bigger daily so they are getting fed. Most people who raise rabbits don't keep feed in front of them 24/7, but the rabbits being without water is a cause for concern in these temps.