Pets at Home creates more misery for our rescue - 04/02/2006
What follows is the personal opinion of Green Fields Rescues centres manager:
This time around its Pets at Home at Slough we have to thank for the existance of these 17 unwanted baby rabbits. It beggers belief that they are legally allowed to get away with this, but when you purchase an animal from Pets at Home the small print on the reciept you are issued states "we do not guarantee the age or sex of the livestock we sell" which makes you wonder what on earth they are doing selling animals in the first place....however, this doesnt stop the staff from seemingly having a random guess at the sex while convincing the shopper they have been accurate. Sexing rabbits is NOT difficult to do. We have NEVER rehomed a mis-sexed rabbit from our rescue and as its an easy thing to learn to do correctly there is no reason why we ever should. So why cant Pets at Home say the same thing? Surely a big company like this should have a budget for top level staff training. They damned well SHOULD be able to guarantee the sex of the animals they sell.
In this case, the family in question had been sold "2 females". Around 12 weeks later, once they had become old enough to breed, the first litter of baby rabbits was born. As females can get pregnant within a few hours of giving birth, the male should have been removed right away. The staff at Pets at Home Slough however, told the family not to worry about this telling the worried family that "the female cant get pregnant again while she is still feeding the babies". They didnt mention that the father could indeed have killed the young too and that un-neutered males should never be left with newborn kits. They were lucky and the first litter survived. 4 weeks later, the second litter arrived. However, the family didnt discover the litter, hidden in a nest....until the female was pregnant again.
Pets at Home took some of the first litter back into the shop to sell on at just 6 weeks old which they advised the family was the right age for them to be weaned. This is utter rubbish and baby bunnies should never be removed from their mother until they have reached 10 weeks old. It is common practise for Pets at Home to stock baby rabbits of this age and as per RWA guidelines on the correct age for weaning, this is yet another reason to avoid Pets at Home at all costs.
Then followed several months of Pets at Home mis- sexing more of the resulting litters until they were old enough that the remainder of the first litter all became pregnant too and the situation began to spiral out of control. Finally realising that Pets at Home had persistantly misadvised and misinformed them, in desperation, the family rung us for help.
We arrived to find 17 rabbits and just 3 hutches. Pets at Home had also told the family the following gem of rabbit care information: "If you feed the rabbits on a complete food, you dont need to feed them anything else." !!!!!!!!Consequently, these rabbits had NEVER been fed any hay. Infact, hay should make up 90% of a rabbits diet and there is no such thing as an entirely "complete" food. It is utterly amazing to all of us that these rabbits surivived the onset of gut stasis without hay. The family had no idea that the rabbits needed any toys or stimulation so were in totally blank hutches, all were unvaccinated as Pets at Home had omitted to mention that requirement as well, they were on dusty Pets at Home brand wood shavings with the result that we suspected all of them may have myxomatosis due to their irritated eyes and nasal passage ways.
So, we now have 17 unwanted, unvaccinated, unneutered rabbits. The cost of getting these rabbits ready for rehoming will be in the region of £1800 which we are going to have to scrape and fundraise like mad to acheive.
Pets at Home meanwhile, profited from the mis-sale of the "female" rabbits in the first place, profited again from the sale of the litter they took from their mother too young at 6 weeks old and profited again from the sales of the sub-standard food they recommended as "complete" and from the dusty bedding they sold.
What makes me as a rescue centre manager angry is that we dont understand WHY Pets at Home should be allowed to profit from these animals misery and we have to pick up the pieces, struggling every single day to make enough money to keep the rescue going. And its not just us, we know of countless other rescues affected in the same way as our rescue is and the majority of the time all of these rescues are so overwhelmed we dont have the energy or finances to do anything about it. I know only too well the feeling of hopeless desperation of "one little rescue" in the face of a corporate giant, but we HAVE to start to stand together to do something about this. THIS time it was Sloughs branch responsible for the situation of these 17 rabbits but we also pick up the pieces from the stores at Reading, Farnborough and Wokingham and its time it stopped. Are you a rescue centre manager? Do you have documented evidence of the impact that your local Pets at Home is having on your rescue? Please get in touch if you do.
Its NOT difficult to correctly sex baby rabbits, we do it every day and have NEVER got it wrong. The bottom line is that while the law allows for Pets at Home to hide behind the disclaimer of "We do not guarantee the age or sex of the livestock we sell" then there is no incentive whatsoever for the staff to do so correctly.
VOTE WITH YOUR FEET AND VOTE WITH YOUR PEN AND VOTE WITH YOUR WALLETT.
1)Dont buy your pet supplies in Pets at Home or any other store which stocks animals. Go to a garden centre or independant shop who doesnt stock any livestock.
2)Write to your MP. Tell them you are appauled that the law allows Pets at Home to practise pet sales in the way that they do and tell them about how rescues such as ours struggle to keep going in the face of the overwhelming numbers envolved.
3) Go into Pets at Home and look at the animals. Make sure they have plenty of water and lots of hay. If they havent complain loudly to the manager. Also complain if the rabbits and guinea pigs share a pen. Mention that the RSPCA, RWA and Cavy Trust ALL say rabbits and guinea pigs should NEVER live together. Talk to people who you can see looking at the rabbits and guinea pigs. Tell them about RESCUE centres as an alternative and tell them Pets at Home create misery for rescues up and down the country and that they consistantly mis-sex the animals they sell hiding behind their disclaimer.
Can you help?? Green Fields Rescue would like to launch a legal challenge against the get out clause Pets at Home uses on their reciepts as being an "unfair disclaimer" but we need funding and legal support. Do you know a corporate law solicitor who would take on this case as pro bono work? Please contact us if you do. We would also like to press Pets at Home to meet the costs of getting these 17 rabbits ready for rehoming. Are you good at letter writing? Could you draft something we can send to their head office?
Can you make a donation to help us get these bunnies ready for rehoming? A donation of £10 feeds a small group of these rabbits for a week, £15 pays for vaccinations, a donation of £40 pays for a male to be neutered and a donation of £60 pays for a female to be spayed. Please give what you can via the "help us" section of this website or send a cheque payable to Green Fields Rescue to the address on the contact page. If you email us we can give you the account details for the rescue if you would to do an online bank transfer.
Want to adopt from this group? 8 have gone to ARC in west London www.animalrescueandcare.org.uk and the rest are here at Green Fields Rescue. They will be listed on the rabbits available page under the heading "Rescued Group of 17"
***UPDATE***
Thankyou so much for the letters, phone calls and emails of support. We are collecting a rather amazing amount of evidence of Pets at Homes incompitent staff country wide. I even took a call from Scotland on this subject this morning.
We also now have a contact working INSIDE PETS AT HOME who will be obtaining film and audio of consignments of dead and dying baby rabbits arriving from the mass breeding centre that Pets at Home use to supply their stores, some so young they dont even have their eyes open, some who have been so poorly bred they have teeth malocclusion at just 6 weeks of age. As well as several other pieces of evidence to take to the national press should we need to.
Please continue to send us your Pets at Home horror stories for our file and thankyou once again for all your supportive messages.
Remember, boycott stores and spread the word...
"PETS AT HOME....LEAVE THEM ALONE"
