EA - Two Concrete Ways to Help Feeder Rodents by Hazo

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Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Two Concrete Ways to Help Feeder Rodents, published by Hazo on March 14, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.Feeder rodents are rodents that are fed to pet reptiles, mainly snakes. After many years of consolidation and growth, feeder rodent farming has turned into an invisible form of factory farming. Indeed, we estimate there are 200-650 million feeder rodents produced globally each year.In 2019, saulius wrote anarticle estimating the total number of feeder mice, and bringing attention to some of their welfare issues. Here, we build on salius' work through additional research, including conversations with members of the feeder rodent industry.We provide a new estimate of the size and scope of the industry, an overview of how feeder rodents are farmed, the market structure of the global feeder rodent trade, the major customers and farming operations, and welfare considerations based on our interviews and a site visit to a small rodent farm.Finally, we discuss two concrete ways to help the hundreds of millions of rodents farmed each year: public pressure campaigns against zoos, and creating sausages that could serve as an alternative to whole animal feeding.Industry OverviewFeeder Rodent PopulationWeestimate that there are 200-650 million feeder rodents produced globally each year. Of these rodents, we estimate 150-500 million are mice and 28-120 million are rats. There is also a small amount of guinea pigs farmed each year, fed to the largest of snakes, birds of prey, and felines, but we expect this number is very low relative to the total number of rodents. This estimate is congruent with salius' previous estimates of 85 million to 2.1 billion. The estimate also aligns with areport in the Independent which pegged the number at 167 million feeder rodents sold in the US in 1999, which was well before the large Chinese farms entered the market, though it is unclear how the author reached his conclusion.Rodent FarmingRodents are farmed in tubs that are placed inrodent racks. Depending on the size of the operation, each tub will include male and female breeders in a ratio of roughly 4 to 6 females to each male, and some number of litters of baby rodents. In larger operations, it is not uncommon for one tub to have 10 male, 60 female breeders, and many baby rodents. Each tub is typically lined with liquid absorbent bedding, usually wood shavings or paper strips. Rodent food is generally supplied in the form offormulated pellets that sit on wiring on top of the tub opening, and water is provided either via gravity-fed bottles or automated watering systems that run throughout the rack.Each mouse will generally have 5-10 litters per year and around 3-20 children per litter. Rats can have up to 8 litters per year and average 8 children per litter. These ranges can vary widely based on environmental conditions and evolved changes to the breeding line. Some operations will selectively breed for higher litter size or other desired traits and will cull breeder females when they become unproductive. Children are "pulled" or "harvested" from the tubs, often pre-wean, and killed.Weaned children are often placed in a separate tub where they grow to the desired size before being killed. Farming large numbers of rodents can thus be quite concentrated, with small buildings able to produce millions of rodents per year. For example, the photo below shows Mice Direct's mouse farm in Georgia, which you can also see a video ofhere.Replacement breeders are taken directly from the colony. The rodent population is therefore self-propagating, meaning that genetics are not as heavily optimized as they are in other areas of animal agriculture. Colonies of rodents can collapse occasionally, typically as a result of disease. In these circumstances, which one industry professional ...