The Amish have puppy mills?
Yes, it is a well-known fact 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 USDA commercial dog farms or puppy mills, they are a cash crop and just another source of lucrative income for the Amish. In fact, in the past two years, there has been a large increase in the number of new Amish kennels and existing kennels have added large numbers of breeding dogs to their already operating kennels.
Where are the Amish puppy mills located?
Amish puppy mills are thriving today thanks to large puppy broker websites that sell puppies. Any state that has an Amish community most likely has puppy mills. Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, is home to the largest number of Amish and Mennonite puppy mills, followed by Holmes County, Ohio, Shipshewana, Indiana, and Davies County, Indiana, upstate New York, South Caroline and more.
Southern Illinois now has a high concentration of Amish puppy mills licensed by the USDA in and around the Amish community of Arthur, Illinois. Many other states have Amish puppy mills scattered throughout them. 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?
Because dogs legally are considered livestock, they are treated the same way as any other livestock animal being raised on the property. Many Amish puppy mills are licensed by the USDA so they can ship and sell puppies online through puppy broker websites and more. They usually house them in barns, pole barns or out buildings called Sundowner buildings. This housing is outfitted for large (hundreds) or small (twenty) scale dog breeding.
The dogs live like livestock. They live 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 force bred at every heat cycle being bred until their bodies can no longer produce a profitable litter. They receive little to no veterinarian care as vet care costs money and takes away from profit. They are 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 the Amish sell puppies. If they are selling puppies to pet stores, they use a puppy broker. A puppy broker will visit the facility to buy puppies ready to be marketed to consumers via pet stores. The puppy broker takes the puppies to a distribution center for final processing and further distribution to pet stores across the country.
The Amish also sell their puppies directly to the public through their own websites and online puppy broker websites. Two well know online sites used by the Amish are Lancasterpuppies.com and Greenfieldpuppies.com. 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.
What happens to the breeding dogs after they are ‘used up’?
Once a breeding stock dog is no longer producing a profitable litter for the 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.