The Pup Problem

RM WEEKLY · ISSUE NO. 10

I've been discussing the feasibility of this industry for the last 9 issues. It's time to out the darker side, before some up-and-coming filmmaker starts a career, “exposing,” it.

Mammals produce milk to feed their young. If your mischief isn't producing young, they're not producing milk.

A cow produces around nine thousand liters of milk for one calf. That one calf? If it's male, it goes to become veal.

A dam will produce 8 to 12 pups, 10 on average, and produces around one liter per berthing.

Let's do the division. The cow costs one calf for nine thousand liters. The rat costs ten pups for one. That’s the pup problem.

Where the cattlemen have veal, we have research labs and pet shops. It's a dark truth for both industries.

Last week I was in New York writing about how no dairy would be possible without pregnancy and birth. For the rat, we can expect to harvest one liter of milk per rat for each litter. One liter per ten pups.

What do we do with all those pups? We could certainly commoditize them. Research labs prefer to raise pups on formula, anyway, to eliminate variables. It might be an uncomfortably dark second revenue stream but, unlike the cow people, these pups would be giving their lives to improve ours, instead as a luxury meat.

I'll be honest, I don't know what the optimal solution is. So I'll ask you, my friends. Please, write in with your own ideas at:

https://www.ratmilkers.org/contact-us/

Stay bold, my friends.

– BigCrazyBaldhead