Culling. It is a word that sounds harsh with some very serious public relations problems. Most of the laymen I ask believe that sacrifice has something to do with killing animals, but this is not always the case. Sacrifice is a tool used by breeders to strengthen their bloodlines. It is vital and necessary and most of the time does not involve killing anything.
So, what is sacrificing?
Trimming something only means removing it from the breeding population. Of course, one method to do this is to kill that animal, but this is drastic and often unnecessary. More often, the waste is sterilized, castrated, delivered to non-breeding households, kept separate from the opposite sex, or if they are birds or reptiles, the eggs can be removed so that they do not hatch. All these methods are acceptable means of sacrifice.
Why does the public think that sacrificing means killing?
This is because the word itself is dated. It was used a lot before having an indoor pet was considered the norm. Of course, the sacrifice these days was associated with farm animals and, unfortunately, once a farm animal loses its value on the farm, it is often sacrificed and eaten for dinner. Those were times when most people could not afford to feed an extra mouth that had no other purpose than wandering the farm like a pet. It was a harsh reality.
What is sacrifice used for?
All dedicated breeders use selective elimination as a means to improve their bloodlines. Having too many cocks is very common since almost half of the fertile eggs turn out to be male chicks. Obviously, hens that have the courage to lay eggs and too many roosters will cause many problems to fight against the hens and the territory. Most farmers in this environment will choose only a handful of the best roosters to keep, those who have the qualities they want to pass on to the next generation, and the rest of those extras often end up in the cauldron. In indoor pets the sacrifice is practiced on a smaller scale and for somewhat different reasons. Let's say that a dog breeder has one of his own puppies because, as a puppy, he has all the traits that the breeder is looking for. Now let's say that the puppy grows and is perfect in every way, except that now it no longer conforms to the rules of the breed, did not grow enough to give birth to puppies, has an unstable disposition or has some genetic condition. Now the breeder is faced with the decision to sacrifice the dog. Unlike farm animals, this usually means that the animal in question is sold to a home exclusively exclusive to pets under the condition that it is never raised. Sacrifice is the way we keep our lines healthy, beautiful or well tempered. It's the way we create healthier and stronger lines. The bad breeders who are in it just for the money will simply throw two purebred animals and will pledge the descendants who do not meet the standards for anyone who buys them. This would be the case of the puppy mills, the kitten mills and some smaller breeders. This is the reason why certain breeds have so many health problems because these people do not care if their toy poodles have heart murmurs, as long as they can keep producing puppies and getting the cash! This is often detrimental to pet owners and a very poor practice.
Are wild animals never thrown?
Yes, wild animals are subject to sacrifice. Many times this has nothing to do with people. Let's say, for example, that a deer baby is born with a malformed back leg. No matter how well your mother cares, this baby will not be able to run fast enough to get away from predators. It will not be able to reach adulthood and transmit this undesirable trait, while wolves or other predators will probably eliminate it when it is still young and given that it will never be a viable player, the wolves will indeed have sacrificed it. Sick animals will also be captured by predators, which eliminates genes that could be passed on to future generations that are susceptible to disease. Believe it or not, predatory animals practice sacrifice and in their efforts strengthen their prey with successive generations.
Sometimes the sacrifice of wild animals is practiced by humans. In the United States, there are many people who hunt deer to keep their population at bay. In most areas, hunters only kill money, sacrificing by gender. This is because the law knows that it only takes a handful of dollars to create the next generation, while many people need the same number of children. By sacrificing these additional dollars, food sources for deer are still plentiful and overpopulation and starvation do not arrive. In areas where overpopulation and hunger are a problem, hunters are allowed to sacrifice any deer they see regardless of sex to alleviate the problem. This is not at all an American affair: in Africa, whole herds of elephants have been sacrificed in sacrifice efforts for many of the same reasons. Of course, these actions were subject to great scrutiny, since these sacrificial operations were carried out in a deficient manner: the weakest people were not selected for sacrifice, only whole herds at random. This can be effective in keeping those elephants in particular away from human settlements and making food sources more abundant for survivors, but it does not do much more and does not really benefit the species as a whole. In any case, it caused damage when the babies' lives were allowed: they were sold in zoos and circuses or donated to shrines where they grew up without older elephants to keep them in place. In essence, they became bullies of elephants as teenagers and adults, going through the rhino killing the revelry, a behavior that until that time had never been documented. This was sacrificing at its worst.
What is the future of sacrificing?
In the old days, sacrificing almost always meant killing an animal. In fact, when the breeders began to concentrate on the breeds of dogs and cats, some killed kittens and puppies that had an undesirable trait that did not conform to the breed standard, perhaps a white spot or a flaccid ear. Today, our attitudes have softened and few veterinarians are willing to sacrifice perfect health animals, and the breeders themselves are generally in agreement with selling "pet-quality" animals as domestic companions for people who will never raise them in the first place. . Zoos practice what I like to call partial sacrifice when they give their contraceptive primates. This allows them to live in normal groups of men and women without the additional expense of many unplanned babies. When the zoo wants them to have babies, contraceptives can be eliminated from their diet and animals can resume their reproductive life. This is the same concept of capture and release programs established for street cats. In the old days, street cats were killed because nobody wanted them as pets and they had kittens everywhere. Currently, volunteers usually catch these cats, sterilize or neutralize them, and then release them again in the area. There are benefits to this: first they can not populate anymore and, secondly, given that there are already established cats in that territory, the new ones will not enter an area in large numbers as they would if they were devoid of other felines. Over time, these cats will die slowly, their number will decrease and, with a bit of luck, the problem could be solved for a while. This is important because the savages do a lot of damage to wildlife and they are also a nuisance for people. Not to mention that they endanger the cats they know by giving them the diseases they have trapped by being in such a large population. In the end,
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