Post by Dick Ciampa on Aug 10, 2018 11:58:56 GMT -5
2014 Greyhound Adoption Rate
In my quest to get a more accurate greyhound adoption rate I decided to concentrate on one year and for no particular reason I chose 2014. I had a few rules that I wanted to follow and they were get as much accurate information as possible and while some numbers would have to be estimated to get as accurate an estimate as possible.
We see the number 20,000 greyhounds killed a year used a lot. That is an estimate based on fantasy and driven by getting donations. Since I'm not looking for donations I will let the numbers fall where they may.
According to the Greyhound Review there were 10,673 pups whelped in 2014. I also know 6885 pups whelped in 2014 ran at least 1 maiden race, thanks to Chris Molnar for that information.
I now had to figure out a mortality rate of the 10,673 pups at tattoo. Tattoo is at 3 months of age. In the wild the mortality rate is well over 20 percent, but purebred dogs have a better rate than that. I checked some purebred sites and talked to some greyhound people and the best estimate I can come up with is 14%. This would include stillborn, some pups die a few hours, days or weeks after birth for various reasons, such as the runt of the litter isn't strong enough or the mother suffocates them. These pups, or any animal's young, have no immune system and things that kill the young before three or four months of age wouldn't kill them a little later in life as their immune system develops.
Using the 14% mortality rate I had a base number of 9178 to start with.
There are dogs that run official schooling races, but are not fast enough to make it into a maiden race and those dogs aren't included in the 6885. I know Greyhound-Data, G-D, doesn't include schooling races, but Trackinfo does.
I now started entering sires, from the top sires in the Greyhound Review, into G-D. If you click on the offspring of a sire you can then click date of birth and G-D will arrange the offspring by date of birth. This allowed me to have all the 2014 pups by that sire in a row. On the right of the offspring page G-D shows how many races each offspring ran. Any offspring with zero I entered into Trackinfo to see if this pup ran any schooling races.
I set up a database with the sires name and a column for "yes ran schooling race' and a column for "no schooling race". I also had a column for no, but adopted.
There are about 110 U.S. adoption groups, out of 350 or more, registered on G-D. G-D allows these groups to put a live link in red that the pup is either up for adoption or has been adopted.
Like this.
www.greyhound-data.com/d?i=2159452
I would click the pups name on G-D and if it showed he or she was adopted I recorded that in my database. While less than 1/3 of the adoption groups are registered with G-D I could positively account for those dogs.
Between the "top sires" and other sires from the breeding list in the Greyhound Review I found 234 different sires that had at least 1 litter in 2014 and also had at least 1 pup that ran either no races or schooling races, but not a maiden race.
I found 1927 pups with no races. Of those pups 1371 had no schooling races and 556 did run schooling, but not a maiden race. Of the 1371 pups with no schooling races 454 were adopted by those 110 adoption groups on G-D.
I now have accounted for 6885 pups that ran at least a maiden race, 556 that ran at least a schooling race and another 454 that had a registered name and were adopted.
That is a total of 7895.
I then contacted a big adoption group in the Midwest and found out they adopted 31 tattooed, but unnamed pups and I found out 12 more unnamed pups were adopted from three other groups. .
This brought the total up to 7938
I also know about 130 dogs die per year in Florida on track grounds. These 130 dogs didn't all die racing since the death has to be reported if a dog dies anywhere on track grounds. Any dog that dies from sickness or disease, such as cancer, is recorded in that number. Since Florida has just over 2/3rds of the tracks in the U.S. I estimated 65 dogs died at the tracks not in Florida.
Once at the track there are only a few options for the dog. The dog either died on track grounds, and we know that number is 195, they were adopted, the dog was sent back to the farm for breeding or in a small number of cases the owner gave the dog away as a pet to someone.
I had a base number of 9179 to start and 7938 pups I can account for. However, I still have the difference between 9179 and 7938, which is 1241, to account for. I know 195 of these dogs died on track grounds so there are 1046 still unaccounted for.
At this point the adoption/back to farm rate is 84.4% It would probably be reasonable to use the 84% on the 1046 pups not accounted for, but I will err on the low side and use 70%. That number is another 732 pups adopted for a total of 8670.
That is an adoption/back to the farm rate of 94.4%
I know some people like to question the "back to the farm" pups so I did a little research on that. I need to point out this is NOT for the year 2014 it is just the number of pups "back at the farm" in one copy of the Greyhound Review. This is not part of the 2014 rate.
Looking at the 2017 Summer Greyhound Review there are 150 different sires in the breeding report. Some of those sires have died and only frozen semen is available and other younger sires had semen collected and were adopted out. If I guess 30 percent of those sires are not at a farm that would leave 105 that are. But, for every single breeding there has to be a different dam and there were 525 different dams in the 2017 Summer Review. Since 6 months is a normal cycle to go into season again none of these dams will be bred again when the next review comes out in three months and there will be over 500 different dams again. Never underestimate the number of pups sent back to the farm for breeding.
This is 2017 not 1977. What was in 1977, isn't in 2017. Drive around your city or town there is a good chance you will see someone walking a greyhound. If you go to a dog park there is a good chance you will see a greyhound. Those sightings are because adoption is important to the greyhound farms and race tracks. Those sightings are because of all the hard work done by the many adoption groups throughout the U.S. and Canada. These adoption groups work tirelessly to both move and adopt dogs.
Support your local greyhound adoption group with a donation or gift card to a local supermarket or better yet become part of the cult.
Adopt a greyhound.
In my quest to get a more accurate greyhound adoption rate I decided to concentrate on one year and for no particular reason I chose 2014. I had a few rules that I wanted to follow and they were get as much accurate information as possible and while some numbers would have to be estimated to get as accurate an estimate as possible.
We see the number 20,000 greyhounds killed a year used a lot. That is an estimate based on fantasy and driven by getting donations. Since I'm not looking for donations I will let the numbers fall where they may.
According to the Greyhound Review there were 10,673 pups whelped in 2014. I also know 6885 pups whelped in 2014 ran at least 1 maiden race, thanks to Chris Molnar for that information.
I now had to figure out a mortality rate of the 10,673 pups at tattoo. Tattoo is at 3 months of age. In the wild the mortality rate is well over 20 percent, but purebred dogs have a better rate than that. I checked some purebred sites and talked to some greyhound people and the best estimate I can come up with is 14%. This would include stillborn, some pups die a few hours, days or weeks after birth for various reasons, such as the runt of the litter isn't strong enough or the mother suffocates them. These pups, or any animal's young, have no immune system and things that kill the young before three or four months of age wouldn't kill them a little later in life as their immune system develops.
Using the 14% mortality rate I had a base number of 9178 to start with.
There are dogs that run official schooling races, but are not fast enough to make it into a maiden race and those dogs aren't included in the 6885. I know Greyhound-Data, G-D, doesn't include schooling races, but Trackinfo does.
I now started entering sires, from the top sires in the Greyhound Review, into G-D. If you click on the offspring of a sire you can then click date of birth and G-D will arrange the offspring by date of birth. This allowed me to have all the 2014 pups by that sire in a row. On the right of the offspring page G-D shows how many races each offspring ran. Any offspring with zero I entered into Trackinfo to see if this pup ran any schooling races.
I set up a database with the sires name and a column for "yes ran schooling race' and a column for "no schooling race". I also had a column for no, but adopted.
There are about 110 U.S. adoption groups, out of 350 or more, registered on G-D. G-D allows these groups to put a live link in red that the pup is either up for adoption or has been adopted.
Like this.
www.greyhound-data.com/d?i=2159452
I would click the pups name on G-D and if it showed he or she was adopted I recorded that in my database. While less than 1/3 of the adoption groups are registered with G-D I could positively account for those dogs.
Between the "top sires" and other sires from the breeding list in the Greyhound Review I found 234 different sires that had at least 1 litter in 2014 and also had at least 1 pup that ran either no races or schooling races, but not a maiden race.
I found 1927 pups with no races. Of those pups 1371 had no schooling races and 556 did run schooling, but not a maiden race. Of the 1371 pups with no schooling races 454 were adopted by those 110 adoption groups on G-D.
I now have accounted for 6885 pups that ran at least a maiden race, 556 that ran at least a schooling race and another 454 that had a registered name and were adopted.
That is a total of 7895.
I then contacted a big adoption group in the Midwest and found out they adopted 31 tattooed, but unnamed pups and I found out 12 more unnamed pups were adopted from three other groups. .
This brought the total up to 7938
I also know about 130 dogs die per year in Florida on track grounds. These 130 dogs didn't all die racing since the death has to be reported if a dog dies anywhere on track grounds. Any dog that dies from sickness or disease, such as cancer, is recorded in that number. Since Florida has just over 2/3rds of the tracks in the U.S. I estimated 65 dogs died at the tracks not in Florida.
Once at the track there are only a few options for the dog. The dog either died on track grounds, and we know that number is 195, they were adopted, the dog was sent back to the farm for breeding or in a small number of cases the owner gave the dog away as a pet to someone.
I had a base number of 9179 to start and 7938 pups I can account for. However, I still have the difference between 9179 and 7938, which is 1241, to account for. I know 195 of these dogs died on track grounds so there are 1046 still unaccounted for.
At this point the adoption/back to farm rate is 84.4% It would probably be reasonable to use the 84% on the 1046 pups not accounted for, but I will err on the low side and use 70%. That number is another 732 pups adopted for a total of 8670.
That is an adoption/back to the farm rate of 94.4%
I know some people like to question the "back to the farm" pups so I did a little research on that. I need to point out this is NOT for the year 2014 it is just the number of pups "back at the farm" in one copy of the Greyhound Review. This is not part of the 2014 rate.
Looking at the 2017 Summer Greyhound Review there are 150 different sires in the breeding report. Some of those sires have died and only frozen semen is available and other younger sires had semen collected and were adopted out. If I guess 30 percent of those sires are not at a farm that would leave 105 that are. But, for every single breeding there has to be a different dam and there were 525 different dams in the 2017 Summer Review. Since 6 months is a normal cycle to go into season again none of these dams will be bred again when the next review comes out in three months and there will be over 500 different dams again. Never underestimate the number of pups sent back to the farm for breeding.
This is 2017 not 1977. What was in 1977, isn't in 2017. Drive around your city or town there is a good chance you will see someone walking a greyhound. If you go to a dog park there is a good chance you will see a greyhound. Those sightings are because adoption is important to the greyhound farms and race tracks. Those sightings are because of all the hard work done by the many adoption groups throughout the U.S. and Canada. These adoption groups work tirelessly to both move and adopt dogs.
Support your local greyhound adoption group with a donation or gift card to a local supermarket or better yet become part of the cult.
Adopt a greyhound.
