The Amish communities have puppy mills?
Yes, it is well-known that almost every Amish community has puppy mills. Some Amish communities focus on dog breeding while others have puppy mills/farms scattered within them. Sadly, dogs are considered livestock in commercial dog breeding farms, puppies are a cash crop and another source of lucrative income. In fact, there has been a large increase in the number of new Amish dog breeding kennels and existing kennels have added large numbers of breeding dogs to their already operating kennels.
Where are the Amish puppy mills located?
Any state that has an Amish communities most likely have commercial dog breeders and puppy mills. Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, is home to the largest number of Amish and Mennonite dog breeders, followed by Holmes County, Ohio, Shipshewana, Indiana, and Davies County, Indiana, upstate New York, South Caroline and more.
Southern Illinois has a high concentration of commercial dog breeders and puppy mills in and around the Amish community of Arthur, Illinois. Collectively these “breeders” house thousands and thousands of imprisoned breeding dogs that are nothing more than livestock…….an income source.
How do the Amish treat the breeding dogs?
Commercial breeding dogs are essentially considered livestock, especially if the breeder holds a USDA license. Dogs are legally housed in dark barns, pole barns or out buildings. This housing is outfitted for large (hundreds) or small (twenty) scale dog breeding.
Dogs are legally kept in often overcrowded, stacked cages. The cages legally only have to be six inches larger than the dogs. The dogs spend their lives in these cages. Their only purpose is to produce puppies. They are forced to bred at every heat cycle, bred until their bodies can no longer produce a profitable litter. Vet care costs money and takes away from profit. Dogs are legally denied the basic physical and mental care needed to be a normal dog. Many shut down emotionally and are living and breeding with painful conditions.
This is why it is so important to see for yourself where your puppy was born.
How do the Amish sell their puppies?
There are many ways Amish dog breeders sell puppies. If they are selling puppies to pet stores, they likely use a puppy broker. A puppy broker will visit the facility to buy puppies ready to be marketed in pet stores. The puppy broker takes the puppies to a distribution center for final processing and further distribution to pet stores across the country.
Many Amish puppy mills and commercial dog breeders are licensed by the USDA so they can ship and sell puppies through puppy broker websites and more.
Well known online websites used by Amish dog breeders are Lancasterpuppies.com, Greenfieldpuppies.com, Keystone and Infinity Puppies. Puppyspot.com, Crockett Doodles, Pawrade and others are also know to use Amish dog breeders to supply their puppies for sale. They may also use social media pages of all kinds, online classified ad sites such as PuppyFind.com now called Puppies.com and flea markets. These breeders can also sell puppies directly to the public through their own websites.
What happens to the breeding dogs after they are ‘used up’?
Once a breeding stock dog is no longer producing a profitable litter for a commercial dog breeder, it is usually killed. Some are taken to dog auctions and sold in “as is” condition to other puppy farmers hoping to get another litter out of them. Very few are rescued.
Some retired breeding dogs are being remarketed, sold online as rescue dogs via well-known online puppy broker websites such as Puppies.com (formally Puppyfind.com), Lancasterpuppies.com, Greenfieldpuppies.com, Dogsnow.com, NextDayPets.com and many others.