Friday, January 4, 2013

Cleaning & Guinea Pigs & Other Stuff

So, today I went to Merrillville in the morning and met Amber.  She adopted Darwin (cream & white coronet guinea pig) and Aries (dwarf hamster).  From her, I picked up a guinea pig for one of my to-be-adoptive homes.  Can't think of her name.  Also picked up 3 texel piggies and a skinny pig for a guinea pig breeder.

Got home, had one of my adoptive homes come over to volunteer.  Now, I love any help I can get, but some people that I have come over... how do I say it... can't take direction very well and I end up standing over them the entire time.  If I'm standing there educating you for 2 hours how to do something, that's great cause you're learning... but I could have probably done it myself in less time.  Not that subsequent times wouldn't be quicker, but there's definitely something to be said for people who I can tell vacuum out the cages starting this way and going down, and I'll be behind you adding shavings.  And the person who I had come over today was awesome.  Been here before, so that always helps.  I don't expect the new people to know what they're doing, which is why most people who've never been here before end up making toys or hidey houses or something like that, because it's easier and I can do it with them without standing over them doing nothing.  But today, it was good. 

Not all the cages needed to be cleaned, but a good majority.  The guinea pig cage that has Apollo and Lucky in it needed to be vacuumed out and have new bedding.  So did the three guinea pig cages in the stack, as well as Rochelle's cage and Lucy's cage.  So we got those vacuumed out, scraped, and refilled with bedding.  Then moved on to the FNs and CN.  I just washed the liners the other day, but I hadn't switched out the old for the new.  Usually I try to give myself time to do that, because I need to pull out the dirty liners, vacuum up everything in the pan, wipe down the pan and get out any stains, and then put in the new liners.  So, it can take awhile to do the span of 5 cages, top and bottom.  It worked out a lot easier with two people though.  And since it wasn't taking me forever to do, I actually had the time to pull all the FNs away from the wall, vacuum all four sides of the cage, and vacuum the floor under the cages.  I even pulled the stack of runs away from the wall (which requires the CN next to the stack to be moved) and vacuumed under that and on all sides of that.  So that was a very nice deep clean for all of that.  I don't think I've pulled the cages away from the wall and vacuumed behind or under them since I switched over to the FNs.  And they weren't filthy, by any means, but there's always some fur buildup on the outside of the cages and I can't get all the poos under the FNs without actually moving them... so that all got done. 

Also got all of the runs vacuumed out and new shavings put in those.  So, any chins wanting to have some babies, now's the time!  Vacuumed the piggie poos off of the liner in the pig's cage.  Let's see.  I just did the degu cage the other day, so they were good and didn't need cleaning.  I moved over the two youngest rats to the middle cage in the rat stack.  I need to move more over, but that just didn't happen today.

I would have already moved the rats, but I had someone who was supposed to be coming for one rat, and they wanted to know if I got any more in.  Well, I had one of my adoptive homes have to bring back some rats due to life circumstances, and so I had 6 new rats coming in (3 originally from here, the other three were theirs).  So, I had told this person about these rats, and I told her that the three that were originally from here were adopted out pretty recently (late November-ish) and they were pretty young, so while I would guess they were probably healthy, if she wanted to adopt them, I couldn't give her a health guarantee on them, as they'd have only been here a few days.  Well, she wanted pictures sent, so I sent her pictures, and she wanted some more, so I sent her some more.  Well long story short she decided she wanted to adopt the four females, plus the original male (to be a cagemate to their current male).  So, they were supposed to be getting a cage (from me) for the rats, a food bowl, water bottle, so on and so forth.  She not-so-nicely threw a fit that hammocks were $8.50, and I told her, the hammocks at the pet store are $9 and that doesn't include tax, so.....  So she asked me what the $4.50 cuddlebuddies were.  So I told her they were like pillows and I told her how big they were and I explained that they don't hang, they're like pillows, and finally she understood, so she asked me if I could somehow make her a $4.50 hammock.  Now, I hate to be an ass, but she was being a pain and at that point I should have told her to shove it.  Come on, you don't go to the petstore and say, "Well, I know this cage is $100, but I want one exactly like it... for $25... make me one?"  No, you don't.  Ok, but anyway, that day I had my issues reigned in more than I do today (this was several days ago), and I told her I would look and see if I had extra fabric.  Cause see, way back when, I picked up a rescue chin and the lady gave me a bag of various fabrics which she said she had used to make hammocks out of.  I feel bad, but I don't know which chin that was.  Anyway, so none of the fabrics were straight fleece.  One was a cottony-type material with a back that almost reminded me of batting, had these fancy design skulls on it, another was a tapestry type material, and the last was a polyester/fleece blend with embroidered flowers and leaves.  So, it was donated material, and so I took pictures of the three fabrics and sent them to her and I told her I could make her hammocks out of any of those for $4.50.  Because none of the materials were straight fleece, they wouldn't be safe for chins, but rats shred/destroy their hammocks anyway, so they can use pretty much whatever is around.  This was before I closed the webstore and all that, because this lady was kind of the last straw before I decided I needed a break.  So, she chose the fleece-ish material with the flowers and so I stayed up late cutting it into hammock size and sewing the hammocks.  So, she was set to come at 6 the next day, but it was going to be 5 my time because she was out of the time zone.  Fine.  So, it's 5 and she's still not here.  It's 6 and she's still not here (I was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt, thinking maybe she was telling me what time she would be here in "my time").  So 6:15-ish I text her and ask if she's still coming.  She tells me, well no, it would be too late.  Well, yes, if she left right then, but I told her, I'd expected her over an hour ago.  Now, this was supposed to be over a 4 hour drive for her, but she had already told me that she realized that, and she said maybe her husband would come instead of her, and I had said that was fine.  So, she wasn't texting back after I'd said that I'd been expecting her for some time, and so I asked her if she forgot.  She said she did, but the fact that I had to suggest it made me think that she really decided she wasn't coming.  So, I texted her asking when she wanted to come.  No text back, of course.  So, I had her email, because we'd already done her adoption form (over texting) because no matter how I sent it, she couldn't get it to open (of course).  So I emailed her nicely laying out the days and times I was available for the next several days.  Yeah... haven't heard from her.  And, even though she pissed me off and made me rush to get her hammocks done (because she's complaining about the price and telling me she wants cheaper ones the night before at like 2 am), I will give her the 5 days to respond back, and if she doesn't, then she gets two more days, and then that's it.  I'm being nice.  But it just pisses me off, cause I try to go out of my way to be nice, and they can't even tell me if they decide to back out?  And not like this is the first time, but they don't even have to admit they don't want the rats.  I don't care what people say as long as they tell me they are backing out.  For all I care, they can call and say "something came up, I'm not going to adopt."  I don't need ANY details, just tell me you're not coming so I know what to do with the critters.  Cause now, they're all sitting here for another 5ish days because I don't know what's going on with her.  Granted, I have a pretty good idea, but every once in awhile someone emails on day 7, so I try to be nice and give people the benefit of the doubt.  I don't think that's going to happen here, but anyway.  Not like 4 of those rats could be adopted out right away anyway (short of people wanting to adopt without the health guarantee), but that other rat has been here since he was like 5 weeks old.  He is now 5.5ish months old and is STILL here.  He's a sweet boy, who wants to adopt a rat?  But like right now, he's hidden on petfinder and he doesn't have ads up anywhere else, because when people express interest and I actually think they're going to show up, I take down ads or mark them on hold or whatever, so I don't end up with a backlog of 10 people wanting the same critter and emailing because the ad's still up.  Frustrating.

And she's not the only one who's backed out.  I have a couple on my waiting list who were wanting to adopt a pair of females.  They were going to take a pair for the trial run prior to Christmas, and then decided after Christmas would be better.  So I said that's fine, I'd contact them after the new year.  So, a few days prior to new year, I thought I'd see if Lilly would go in the cage with Kandie.  Prior to that, Lilly had been in a closed off run by herself, because when I tried to pair her with other females, I still had Lilly's mosaic female here, and so when Lilly got in the cage with her baby and the other females, she went berzerk trying to protect her baby.  Well, now that the baby had been sold, I thought I would try things again, because Lilly had previously done well with other females.  Well, she ended up doing fine with Kandie, so my first thought was to email these people on my waiting list and let them know that I had a pair of females they could take on trial run.  Even though it was a few days prior to new year, I figured we could get a head start on setting a date for them to come pick them up.  Well, surprise surprise, I never heard back.  Sent them the two day notice, still never heard back and tonight was their last night of that, so they are being taken off my waiting list.  Which actually has worked out alright, since Lilly is set to go home soon, and Kandie's being picked up Saturday, but the point is the same -- how difficult would it be to simply email me and say, we decided against it?  Apparently too difficult.

Ok, so moving on.  One of our chins, Spice, is on a trial run right now, and it's been over a week, so I was expecting a call about that.  So they called today and said they want to get her, so we set up a time and all.  I think Saturday.  Anyway, so they have a cage on hold, and they said they were wanting to get some other supplies, so I asked them to email me what else they wanted, so I could get it ready ahead of time.  Because if I know someone wants 5 pounds of food, I will scoop them 5 pounds of food, rather than wait until they get there and have to do it then.  Ok, so I get an email saying they want food, hay, dust, a cage, and so on.  Which, and I mean this with no offense to them, is not helpful to me in any way.  Short of telling me that I should get out a baggie for dust and food.... how much am I getting ready?  No idea.  They also wanted to know about a few other cages that I had for sale.  All of which were here and they looked at, at the time they decided which cage they wanted.  Which is fine, but these people really wanted a sturdy cage.  Back in 2003, when I got my first chin, cages were built a lot better than they are now, and I have my first chin cage up for sale.  So, that one is kind of the exception to the rule, as it has somewhat thicker bars and the bars don't flex if you press on them.  So, they're asking about other cages, and I'm explaining that I don't think they'd like these certain other cages, because of the fact the bars flex, which they said they didn't like because it wasn't sturdy.  Well, one of the cages they were asking about was one that I'd sold the other day, but they said they liked it because it folded down. Well, here's the thing.  I can break down any cage you want -- but YOU will be the one putting it back together.  She said she liked that it folded down flat (which that one did fold down flatter than the one they had on hold, because it had a 1" pan versus like a 5" base), but I told her, you're giving up the sturdiness for ease of breakdown.  Which, short of having some necessity of breaking down the cage weekly for some reason, is only a problem once -- the initial time you bring the cage home. 

And then they asked about the 13% discount.  And here's the thing.  This is why I NEVER do sales on chin prices.  Because everyone in the last month tries to call me up and ask if I can refund them some money because they "just got the chin 7 days ago, and Meijer honors price changes up to 7 days after the sale."  Hate to break it to you, but this is NOT Meijer and they do NOT have chinchillas, so I hardly think you can compare.  And I probably will not do another sale on chin prices after this one, because I have gotten so many phone calls and emails.  Everyone wants something for nothing.  I usually do $20 off a pair, which is reasonable in the chin world.  Well, now, people want 13% off each chin and $20 off the pair (despite the fact that right now I don't even have a pair to sell), and they ask, oh, am I giving out the reward cards yet?  No, I'm not.  It's not even about the money, but I'm not going to apply the sale price, and then another different sale price, and then give you money off for every so much you spend.  This is not extreme couponing on TLC people.  You can't pile discount on top of discount, and then, there was one person who wanted all those discounts (and how they found out about the reward cards, which I think I've only mentioned once or twice on here, I don't know), and then they asked, oh and could I reduce the price cause they just don't have the money?  No.  Guess what?  You don't have $65 for a chin and $75 for a cage and another $25 for some supplies, you don't need a chin.  I'm not saying people without money shouldn't adopt, but if $10 is going to break the bank, you should probably go with a cheaper pet as far as vet bills are concerned.  I said no on the additional discount because they basically wanted to get a total of $300 worth of stuff (sale prices, mind you), for like $200.  Uh, sorry, this isn't a garage sale.  You ask for a discount nicely, and without asking me to pile the discounts on top of one another, I may give it to you.  But $100 discount?  Sorry, I still gotta feed these things at the end of the day.

So I told the people with Spice they could have the discount.  But here's the problem with that.  I usually do it this way -- when you say you want the chin and I put it on hold, that's the price you pay.  So, if the chin is $150 and you put it on hold, you pay $150.  If I decide to do a sale the following week and cut adoption fees in half, the point is to move additional chins, not to reduce the prices for those that are already on their way out.  I'm sorry if people don't like that.  But see, people want the price that applies when they pick up.  Well, sometime.  Cause see, if the chin's on sale today, and they wait til February to pick up, well, darn, they want the sale price, cause it was on sale when they put it on hold.  Well, funny, if you want it that way, then if it wasn't on sale at the time it was put on hold, you would get the normal price.  You can't have it both ways, people.  The reason I have it the way I do is so that if someone sees the chin and it's on sale, they get the sale price when they pick it up, even if the sale is over.  If it wasn't on sale and now is, they pay the price it was when they put it on hold.  That's the only way to be fair, I feel, because it doesn't reward people for (intentionally or not) not picking up until their happens to be a sale, and it doesn't punish people who see a chin on sale and can't pick it up until the sale's over.  I hate to be an ass, but don't like it?  Too bad.  I try to be fair but at the end of the day, I can't please everyone.  There's always someone who wants something else, or something for nothing, and I have been walked all over enough in the first few years of having the rescue open that I can't just bend to every little whim of the customer.  I no longer work in retail, but when I did, I HATED that "the customer is always right" thing.  No, they're not.  If the sign says "pants 50% off" and they take a shirt off the rack, it's not 50% off people!  The sign says "pants," but they think because it says 50% off it applies to everything (I worked in the fashion department of Meijer for years and saw this stupidity every day).  Same goes for specific things.  We used to have Americana t-shirts that would have flags, or red white and blue... people would pick up a t-shirt with a butterfly on it (and mind you, not a red white and blue butterfly) and wonder why it wouldn't ring up the price for the Americana t-shirts.  Just like I've had people ask, if a pair is $20 off, why isn't a single chin $10 off?  Cause it's a PAIR.  Jeez.  Like buy two, get one free.  If you just buy one.. you don't get anything free.

If you can't tell, people are getting to me, and I had to take a break from the store before I really told some people what I thought of them and their ideas about how my discounts should work.  I really feel like, you want to set discounts, go open a store.  I had someone tell me the other day that a certain item I have is priced above retail.  Is it?  It depends where you buy it.  If you look at other chin retailers, you will find that my price is EXACTLY what everyone else charges for this item.  If you can find it cheaper, by all means, go and get it cheaper.  But I'm not going to lower my price because you found it cheaper.  Sorry, I don't price match.

I got into this discussion with someone over hay the other day (and no, hay is not the item in question above).  I can get a 40-50 lb bale of hay for $5 and I usually even get one donated when I go to pick up bales.  I sell the hay for $1/pound.  Sure, that is a ton of profit if I actually sold the 250 pounds of hay I come home with... but in reality, I sell very little hay.  Most of it is eaten by the critters here.  So, I had someone ask if they could buy a bale of hay from me for $5.  Uh, no.  And I'm not even trying to be mean, but I can only fit a few bales in my blazer, so I have to get someone to borrow me their truck or drive with me out there to get the bales, and I have it stored up away from the floor so it doesn't mold.  By all means, anyone wants the name and phone number of the place I get the hay, I will gladly give it to you.  But, I will not pick you up a bale.  I don't care that it would be a fortune in profit if I sold someone a $5 bale for $50 (which, no one would want to do anyway, as most people can't easily store a bale or several of hay), but I'm also not going to drop my price down to 10 cents per pound, as that would be stupid and I'd spend more time in bagging it up and hoarding the paper grocery bags to put it in.

Same goes with the other item mentioned above.  If I sold it for what it really costs me, I'd probably have everyone and their brother in the chin community buying it from me.  But here's the thing -- I don't want to be shipping out a gazillion boxes with this item, because it wouldn't be worth the time and effort for me to get it, package it, get it in a box for shipping, and so on.  By charging the same price that everyone charges, we're all making relatively the same margin on this item, the difference being in how much we pay for it where we get it.  If someone finds it cheaper, by all means.  I really don't care one way or the other if people get supplies from me, I just want people to be able to find safe supplies, which is why I sell supplies.  Takes all the guesswork out for people who don't want to have to hunt down a certain brand of food. 

Ok, moving on again.  So, I had posted on here about the guinea pig that Amber (guinea pig rescue) had adopted out to these people, who had listed it for free.  Well, (and I think I said this already), the guinea pig ended up at a flipper's house, who then listed it on craiglist with cage and "$300 worth of hay" for $150.  I had emailed this person asking if they'd sell just the pig, because Amber was trying to get her pig back, and they said sure, for $75.  So I told them that while I would rather get an animal from craigslist versus the pet store, I would not pay more than double the price I'd pay at the pet store on craigslist.  That's crazy.  Shit, I can get a nice pedigreed, show quality texel (more difficult to find breed of guinea pig) for $50 from a reputable breeder.  Why would I want to pay $75 from some random craigslist person for a pig with unknown health history and all? 

Anyway, moving along to the present.  One of my adoptive homes said they would try to contact this person and see if she would sell them just the guinea pig.  Well, the person flat out refused, saying the guinea pig could not go with her stuff.  Now, without really going into it, you could make a C&C cage for probably under $40, a gp at the pet store is $35, and a bale of hay is $5.  That's $80 for everything NEW, nowhere near $150.  So, my adoptive home told the person that if they changed their mind, to let her know.  The response she got was that she had sold the pig and was taking the ad down, and the person who bought the pig was happy to pay that much because they were going to make a lot of money breeding the pig.  Oh, I could pull my hair out.  To start with, if someone thinks $150 for a pig and cage is a GOOD price, they have seriously inflated ideas about what a pig costs in the first place.  And weird ideas about how much $300 worth of hay really is.  I could feed the rescue hay for the rest of my life on $300.  Which makes me think that this is someone completely uneducated about pigs.  So, chances are, the pig will not be fed leafy greens, because those actually cost a decent amount if you're feeding a good amount per day, and those would cut into her profits on the pigs.  And if they think that's a good price for the pig and cage, what do they think the pig is worth, $50? $75?  Who knows, but I bet it's more than the $35 that pet stores sell their pigs for.  And I hate to break it to anyone, but if you're going to sell your animal at ABOVE pet store price, you better have something special to justify that.  Because many people will just as soon go to the pet store and avoid the breeder/rescue entirely.

So, say she breeds this pig and has babies.  Well, if she thinks the adult is worth a ton of money, well, darn, the babies must be worth even more (on that train of thought).  Now.  Adult pigs (here) have a re-homing fee of $20, unless they are pedigreed.  Baby pigs (3 weeks-ish) are $35.  The pet stores typically have 6-8 month old pigs for $35.  So, people are often willing to pay $35 for a baby pig here.  But let me tell you, by no means are they flying out of the cage with people snatching them up at $35.  So, asking even more is going to make them sell even slower.  And, with guinea pigs being about to reproduce at 3 weeks of age, chances are, this person won't have a second cage, and so the dad pig will still be in there, re-impregnating mom every time right after she delivers.  The baby pigs may impregnate each other, or dad may get one of the baby females pregnant.  Maybe a baby male will get mom pregnant.  The longer they're all together, the more likely this is.  That's why we have our pigs separated out at 3 weeks.  Taking no chances.  But see, someone just concerned about the money is just going to breed over and over, and not separate the male and female, and if the babies aren't selling, they're just going to pile up because the person isn't going to stop breeding. 

Let me tell you -- any good breeder is going to keep some of their own, so not everything they produce is going to be for sale.  But even for the ones that are, if there are no buyers, and the breeder is just filling up cages and more cages with the offspring, they are going to stop breeding.  I'm not saying entirely, but I know some chin breeders (and have heard this from additional ones that I don't know personally as well), that if the chins weren't selling, they'd close off a run or two.  No sense producing a ton if the market is saturated.  But the people who are just concerned about the money and not the welfare of the animal  -- nah, not happening.  It is so frustrating.

And then (and this will be the last tangent, I swear), I had posted on facebook that I think several of our females are pregnant, and this one person had posted saying that it was hypocritical to be a rescue and breed.  Really?  Ok.  So here's the thing.  We have three breeding runs.  That's, at the very most, 12 breeding chinchillas, assuming all the runs are full.  I have never denied that we breed, but I have stood behind the fact that we do NOT breed the rescues.  The chins we breed are from known breeders, good genetic lines, good parentage.  And you know, if we have a pair that is not producing good quality, they're split up, and if the quality's bad enough, I don't even care about the lines of the parents, one of them may end up for sale.  Back last January, Joker had a litter.  Two standards and a black velvet.  I remember thinking then that the black velvet was red (which is highly undesirable in chinchillas).  Ok, but I figured, she'd get one more chance.  Joker didn't do good with Bailey, because they both have somewhat loose fur, and loose fur + loose fur does not = strong fur.  So, she'd been paired with Nytro.  Well, the first litter wasn't too great, but I figured we'd try again, because they can have some better than them, some worse.  She littered one large baby in November.  Looked good when it was born... few days later and even my new-breeder-friend could see the red.  Joker is still in the run right now, but her hole is closed off (so the male cannot get to her), and I have the date marked down when we will know for sure if she is or is not pregnant.  If she is pregnant and litters, once the babies are gone, she will be sold, or if she is not pregnant, she will be put up for sale to a pet home.  It doesn't matter that she's got good lines, she is throwing red kits.  And breeders who are breeding for quality are going to pull chins that are not improving the species and throwing something better than they are.  Which is exactly what's happening here.

But going back to the whole breeder and rescue thing.  There is a point to not breeding rescues, and the point is, that you do not know what the health history and genetics of that rescue is.  Just like say you want to buy a nice pedigreed dog.  You want the parents to have the eyes certified, hips certified, and so on and so forth.  Because good breeders do that, so you don't end up with a large dog with hip displaysia at age 2.  Same with chins.  While pedigreed chins are not necessarily always free from defects (I have had a pedigreed chin develop malo -- but like many chin issues, the jury isn't back with whether it's genetic or environmental -- it's like the nature/nurture debate, there's never going to be an answer, because it's a combination), they are considerably more likely to be free from defects.  Let's say I have a chin here develop malo.  Ok, so I pull that chin from breeding, and say I was not the original breeder of that chin, so I would go and alert the original breeder, hey, this certain chin developed malo.  And they would go and if the parents of that chin are still around, potentially pull those from breeding.  So, the chins that are creating a chin that actually expresses the disease (rather than being a carrier for it), would be pulled from breeding.  By doing that, that helps ensure that breeder chins are not going to have as many genetic (or other) flaws, because people are actively removing chins with those flaws from the breeding pool.  But, if you breed your average pet store chin, you have no idea what you could have floating around in that chin's health history and genetic makeup. 

And really, it's not hypocritical to breed and rescue, not in my mind anyway (and I know MANY breeders who feel this way, as many small breeders will take in some rescues if they have room).  With breeding chins (or any critter), you are pairing up chins that complement each other and you're trying to improve the species.  Chins don't breed very fast, so at the absolute max, you could have 2 litters per year, per breeding female.  This year, we are retiring (and will be selling) some of our breeding females, but for most of the year, I had 9 females in the runs.  From 9 females, I had something like... 15 babies?  Not a lot, right?  Here's the other thing.  Chins typically have a 20% mortality rate, and NWI is no different than any other breeder.  I haven't figured out our mortality rate for the year, but assuming 15 babies and a 20% mortality rate, that means that only 12 of those babies lived.  So, by selectively breeding 9 chins, we've had a total of ~ 12 babies alive this year.  That's really not a lot.  Especially not considering that Dennis, who runs the wholesale chin business out in Valpo, supplies all the pet stores with several chins and has several hundred chins at least.  I saw on facebook someone posted that they had 300 babies this year and were shooting for 500 next year (I would assume they are adding females).  And someone's gonna complain that I added freaking 12 to the chin population?  Excuse me, no.  You can leave if you want to argue with me. 

I rescue because there is a need.  There are a lot of chins out there that people get tired of, can't keep, whatever the reason, need to go to another home.  At this point, the rescue is a lot bigger than my breeding operation, and I do not plan to increase the breeding operation significantly.  Maybe at the most I'd add another run or another pair or two of chins in a different cage.  But not enough to produce 500 babies or anything like that.  I remember one year, one big breeder posted on CnH that they had 27 babies born in one day.  If I had 15 born all year, (and obviously, they weren't all born one at a time), that means I had roughly 24-25 days between births.  And in reality, the gap's larger than that, since we had some litters of 2-3.  Versus 27 for ONE DAY.  The people churning out 27 per day and not screening the homes they go into, or wholesaling them to the pet stores, those are the people that people should be concentrating on, if they want to point fingers at why so many chins are in rescue.  Even if I got all 12 babies back at the rescue, that's 12.  I take in over 100 animals per year.  12 more probably won't kill me.  Except, I hardly ever get a baby back, even I hardly ever get rescues back, because for the most part, the screening process works pretty well and people who adopt them end up liking them and keep them.

If I was getting in a ridiculous amount of chins at the rescue, and wasn't adopting them out and was having problems selling babies, I imagine I would slow down breeding.  Close off a few females.  But, because I want to show chins and improve the species, I breed.  And because I care about the welfare of the chins out there that need new/better homes, I rescue.  The two aren't mutually exclusive, except in the part where I don't breed rescues.  Breeder chins are kept separate from rescues, except for the case where I'm selling a breeder chin.  When I put Lilly (culled breeder chin) with Kandie (rescue chin), they're both females, they don't know that one's a breeder and one's a rescue.  They don't care.  But that's the only time.  Or for example, male babies tend to get put in with Winx (my pet male).  Short of same-sex cagemates, the breeding and the rescue chins are kept apart.  But the idea of breeding and rescue, going on at the same place, is not an impossible idea.  The two can, and do, co-exist.  


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