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It's springtime and that means all the farm supply stores will be shipping in ducklings, many already have them. Please help us to ask these stores to special order babies, rather than have them ready to go at their stores. Impulse shopping leads to duck dumping.
(Four Pekin ducklings dumped at Jensen Pond in Syracuse, March 2020)
At pretty much every local pond along the Wasatch Front, you will find dozens of dumped domestic ducks. Many of these are ducklings bought from a farm store on an impulse buy. Once that duckling grows up, many realize how much work they really are and how dirty they can be. They will then take them to a local pond dumping this animal that depends on humans for care. It's inhumane and cruel. We need to get to the root of the problem, one of those being farm stores ordering in ducklings by the dozens ready for people to buy. We've been told some of the farm stores have even encouraged people once they are bigger to take them to a pond.
For far too long we have had a problem with our local parks with ponds becoming the dumping grounds for unwanted farm animals. It is detrimental to the natural wildlife, these domesticated animals are starving, getting injured, facing unnatural predators, and overtaking these parks which are meant to be a place to visit for happiness, not witnessing bloody, or starving animals.
Please print out, read, share and distribute “Are All Your Ducks In a Row? Did You Know?” to libraries and elsewhere, including shopping centers and retailers like Tractor Supply, where baby animals are sold at Easter. Those not sold are trashed. There is nothing cute, cuddly or kind about the business of “Easter” ducklings, chicks, rabbits, and baby geese.
Urge Tractor Supply, IFA, CAL Ranch and other farm stores that sell these baby animals to stop. They are knowingly contributing to the suffering and death of countless creatures. They do not even provide proper care for them in their own stores. Like the customers they sell to, most store employees do not know, for example, that motherless baby animals need dark, quiet places to shelter in, and that being subjected to constant light and noise causes them great suffering and weakens their immune systems. Courtesy: United Poultry Concerns
How you can help.
Write any and all of these, urging them to stop this negligent practice. The animal's life is worth more than their profits.
Contacts
Tractor Supply
Hal Lawton, President & CEO
Hlawton@tractorsupply.com Phone: 615-440-4600 extension 4601 it will go to voicemail
John Ordus Executive VP, Chief Stores Officer
IFA
Cal Ranch
Tom Yearsley, President & CEO
Dallas Greens
If you're ever in Dallas Greens in Syracuse, tell them thank you for not selling ducklings. They said they know this is a problem they are not willing to contribute to despite the profits. They are a part of the solution and deserve praise.