By Steve Rice
Stratford Beacon Herald
Animal rights activists are being blamed for the deaths of over 100 mink in a shocking weekend attack on a St. Marys area farm.
Jeff Richardson was still catching a few loose mink at Glenwood Fur Farm on Monday morning after approximately 1,500 nursing females were released from their pens and turned out into the rain and cold sometime overnight Saturday.
Many mink died in the near-freezing temperature, in fights with one another, or from being hit by cars. Some that were caught and returned to their pens Sunday succumbed to sickness or infection overnight.
“You always know that there’s a really, really small segment of extremists who get enjoyment out of doing this,” Richardson said. “But at this time of year I don’t think there’s a mink rancher that would think that anybody would release a mother from nursing young. They obviously did this to try to kill 5,000 30-day-old mink.
[Press Office note: Read the communique from anonymous activists in our press release here. Please consider that those concerned with the truth should not be misled by claims of those with economic interests, for instance ridiculous stories that the animals released are domesticated and unable to survive in the wild, or that the animals voluntarily returned to their cages, or that they froze to death or starved within hours, or were immediately run over by automobiles or eaten by household pets. Scientific studies have validated that these animals remain genetically wild and are able to survive in a wide range of habitats.]
“Everything that they’ve done are all tell-tale signs of what has occurred (elsewhere) in the past. It clearly isn’t an act of random vandalism or else they wouldn’t have put the effort or risk into doing it. It was clearly calculated … to close the farm.”
Jeff’s brother, Scott, saw a mink on the porch of his house at the west side of the farm around 6:30 a.m. Sunday, then went to the farm to discover hundreds of mink running loose inside the fenced property.
Two lengths of fence had been cut at the north side of the property and a gate at the front opened. All the cage doors inside the two large barns holding the females and their kits were flopped open and information cards about each mink tossed onto the floor.
Employees, family and other ranchers from the area managed to round up about 95 per cent of the 1,500 loose mink over the next several hours and got them back into cages. But it’s impossible to match the females to the litters, increasing the chance that more kits will die if they are rejected by the mothers.
“We’re going to lose more mink over the next three days. The losses as a percentage are small, but any loss is sickening,” said Richardson, who had Sebringville OPP on the property investigating on Sunday but wasn’t holding out hope that they culprits would be caught.
“Historically it’s been difficult to catch them because they’re a real underground part of society,” he said. “But definitely people know things and I hope that they’re sickened by what happened.”
This is the first such attack in the St. Marys area, which has a history of mink farming dating back to the early 1920s and at one time had dozens of small farms in operation. There are currently seven mink farms in the area.
A Chatham area mink farm had pregnant females released in March of 1997 in the first incident in Canada. Two Detroit-area women were jailed and fined.
More recently, in August of 2013 a group calling itself the Animal Liberation Front released about 750 mink and 50 foxes from an operation near Simcoe.
Gary Hazlewood, a former Kirkton area mink farmer and executive director of the Canadian Mink Breeders Association, called it “despicable” for a group to use defenceless animals to further their own ends.
“When a fence is cut and people come in and release animals after hours in inclement weather, then usually it’s animal rights people who eventually will take credit for it,” said Hazlewood, who attended the farm Monday. “At the very best it’s misguided and at the worst, it’s criminal.
“If these people claim to know about the animal, they know at this time of year you have nursing mothers and you have kits that are at risk. If you don’t like a product, you don’t buy a product. But why would you ever put young, defenceless animals at risk?
“They always have a justification in their own mind. But I don’t understand it.”
Kirk Rankin, who operates a nearby farm and is president of the Canada Mink Breeders, said that releasing the mink into the cold and rain is “cruelty in its worst form.”
“It just made me sick. I had a terrible night’s sleep last night because of this,” said Rankin, who helped catch mink on Sunday and was back at the farm Monday morning.
“Most mink are going to be born from the middle of May to the middle of June and they picked the worst night we’ve had with the wind, rain and cold. And you’ve got 5,000 kits counting on moms to keep them warm and they’re all let go. Go in (the barn) and see these cute little mink and they’re going to die of starvation or cold.
“It’s unbelievable. These guys are brain dead.”
On Monday Richardson was considering the possibility of another attack.
“These animal extremists have really been quiet in Ontario the last 15 years, but this is the second one in the last year or two,” he said. “It’s a lesson. We’ll definitely be installing a security system that would alert us to anyone being on the property.”