Marshall Farms

[Toki+Pumpkin+Elmo]

I know that this topic is a very emotional topic, but I felt the need to spread the word.

Marshall farms, located in NY, is a commercial breeder of dog, ferrets, and rabbits. Basically it’s a puppy mill.  The 99.9% of ferrets sold in common pet store are from Marshall farms. These ferrets are known die early and have diseases due to inbreeding. They also supply 50% of rabbits sold in stores. It’s common that they neuter/spay the rabbits as early as 5 weeks of age. This is so that the rabbits can be sold when cute and little and be sold at a higher price since they are neutered/spayed. As you can imagine, this is very dangerous for the rabbits.  This is so that they can get away with ‘not contributing’ to the overpopulation of bunnies. 

Not to mention, the living condition of the animals in the farm.  But I’m sure you can imagine..

Marshall Pet Products is a division of Marshall Farms. They also have a division of Peter’s. Peter’s is sold in major pet stores, rabbit products.

In my opinion, I strongly discourage anyone from purchasing their products. Since it would be supporting a company that contributes to overpopulation of animals and many more issues.  There are plenty of other products to choose from that does not have negative impact to the ‘bigger picture.’ 

By the way, please feel free to correct me if any of the info that I listed are incorrect.

[Deleted User]

Thank you for the information. I have never seen this brand of food on the shelves in the NY stores I shop in. But we can certainly contact Marshalls Farms and register complaints about their practices.

[Sarita]

Yes, this is all true as far as I know. Marshall Farms is part of a larger company that also breeds animals for laboratories including Beagles, ferrets, and minipigs. They are part of the “biomedical community” which is worldwide and probably their main source of business. They are called Marshall Farms Group.

[LittlePuffyTail]

Good for you for spreading the word.

I heard about this awful company a while back and I never buy any of their stuff. Rabbits shouldn’t be commercially bred. I think it’s terrible that people can make a profit doing this.

In my copy of Rabbits USA 2008 I noticed there is a one page ad for Peters complete with adorable baby bunny pics. Maybe if a bunch of us write to the editor they will exclude these ads promoting baby bunnies from Peters. I don’t know if it will do any good but it’s worth a shot.

[Toki+Pumpkin+Elmo]

It’s very ironic that Rabbits USA would have Peters’ ad. It could give wrong impression to ‘new’ bunnies parents. Their products are not even healthy for the buns anyway….

[Beka27]

we’ve had topics about the Rabbits USA and other rabbit mags before. i think they don’t always have the best info, or they are more oriented towards petstores and the idea the rabbits are “simple to care for”. def. not true. there are better places to go for info. as far as them running the Peter’s ads… the mag has to pay for itself somehow. and they do that thru ads. they could not have a full page ad saying the best bunny toy is a cardboard box, there’s no profit that way.

[Sarita]

I totally agree with Beka – these magazines need advertisers to help pay for their magazine or it would never get published. I do think that there are many useful articles though written in these rabbit magazines by some rabbit knowledgeable people from rescue groups and rabbit knowledgeable vets – also many are from freelance writers who seek out rabbit knowledgeable people (I know from HRS) and from what I understand don’t know squat which is why they seek out HRS people to help them. I guess these writers have to make money somehow too.

[kimberleyanddarren]

omg i cant believe people are still allowed to do this!

[LittlePuffyTail]

Another thing that really bugs me about Rabbits USA is most of the pics of rabbits in cages have wood shavings as bedding!

[Author]

Messages