She looks void of life…

4-H teaches how to breed rabbits as livestock right along side of chickens and sheep – not how to take care of them as pets. It is rather sad and there has been more than one occasion that I’ve been at an event with a rescue along with a 4-H contigent there and have subtily tried to inform both the public and the kids at the 4-H that what they’re doin’ is wrong.

I’m very anti- 4h. It teaches children to breed rabbits and the standard 4h cage is a tiny little box with wire on the bottom. I’ve seen several classifieds “Rabbit for sale, was used for 4h and now child is moving on to another project…” Wow, that’s a great way to teach a child responsibility and that animals have no feelings.

I’m not saying all 4h people are bad. There was a multi species 4h show at my horse’s stable this summer and there were a few little girls there who really seemed to love their rabbits and they looked very well cared for, but the whole idea in general is against everything rabbit advocates stand for.

I recently spoke with a lady whose son is raising rabbits in 4H – they do not eat their rabbits however or raise them for food (this particular crew) however her son had the smallest amount of rabbits in the group at 20 rabbits. It was hard being nice to her – I tried to explain about rabbit rescue and what our philosophy is on rabbit care but it did not get through to her…I think she meant well but she had already been “programmed” by their 4H counselor.

One of the shelters that we pull from is in a fairly rural and agricultural part of Santa Cruz county. They get 4H projects in on a fairly regular basis, kid does the project, breeds the rabbit, then dumps the babies at the shelter. Pretty infuriating.

Guh…. X_X

People like this drive me to drink. I swear, WHEN is this world going to come to the realization that LIFE IS NOT DISPOSABLE??

i never really understood the whole 4H thing. i live in the suburbs, but it’s farm country on all sides of us… just… why? i can’t even figure out what these kids are supposed to be learning by doing this. it makes no sense to me.

I was in Horse 4h for a few years and that’s the only 4h I approve of because it’s not about breeding or eating the horses. Horse 4h is just about learning how to care for your horse, nutrition and health, riding and making things for the horse and barn. However, if I had to do it over, I never would have even joined horse 4h just to make a stand about the whole 4h program in general.

Any other 4h is about breeding and raising the animal for food. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

And why the heck would you teach that to kids? So backwards…