Reptile & Amphibian Forums

This is a pretty gross question, and involves animal cruelty, just a head's up

There is a herp store in Florida with large amounts of blood spatter in the back room area where the feeders are kept. The store sells live and freshly killed feeder rabbits. The method for killing those rabbits is to place a broomstick behind the animal's head while pulling the rear legs, hopefully causing the neck to break. However, sometimes the rabbit's head pops off during the process, spraying the blood mentioned before. At least that is the excuse - in reality the blood is from certain other activities that are clearly illegal (throwing animals against walls, etc. . .)

Cervical dislocation is a legal method of euthanasia for mice and small rats; however, I am not aware of the method being used on rabbits, and I am not certain of Florida state law. Anyone out there know? I would *think* that if cervical dislocation is illegal in large rats, a full-grown rabbit would be out of the question. But 'bunnies' are in a grey area, because they are also raised for food and fur.

Thanks for any input - always appreciate the insight.

norvvy

I am not up on the laws but I do know that most rabbit breeders in my area (NE, SD, MO, IA, and KS) use cervical dislocation to deploy sick or injured rabbits. Often this is done by inflicting a blow to the base of the scull with a hard object such as a pipe but can be done by hand.

This method is also used by many that are butchering large quantities of rabbits. You have to realize that rabbits aren't raised primarily as pets, the pets are a secondary market of the meat and show industries. Cervical dislocation couldn't be any worse than, and is possibly more humane, that the methods used on beef cattle. Just my opinion!

I also know that cervical dislocation can cause bleeding from the nose but I really doubt that they are popping the head of using either method, as the head isn't that easy to just "pull" off. I have butchered a great number of bunnies in my day and even on the younger ones the head doesn’t “pull” off!
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Marcia - FroggieB Dragons
www.froggieb.com/MHDHome.html

Having raised rabbits for the commercial meat sale several years, I can say that this is a very acceptable way of putting a rabbit down. Anoher method, although it way seem worse, is a simple strike to the back of the head with a club. Both, IMHO are more humane than CO2.