Commercial dog breeders must meet stronger licensing requirements under a bill passed by the Legislature March 1.<\/p>\n
A commercial dog breeder is a person who engages in the business of breeding dogs and:
\n\u2022 sells, exchanges or leases 31 or more dogs in a 12-month period;
\n\u2022 owns or harbors four or more dogs intended for breeding;
\n\u2022 keeps dogs that produce a total of four or more litters within a 12-month period; and
\n\u2022 sells, exchanges or leases dogs for later retail sale or brokered trading.<\/p>\n
LB427, introduced by Bellevue Sen. Abbie Cornett, establishes new licensure stipulations and requires that a breeder:
\n\u2022 maintain individual animal health records;
\n\u2022 publish an updated facility plan annually;
\n\u2022 provide daily exercise and socialization opportunities;
\n\u2022 groom dogs to ensure very little of their coats are matted;
\n\u2022 offer an exercise area at least three times the size of the primary living area;
\n\u2022 identify all animals with a microchip;
\n\u2022 provide sanitary flooring; and
\n\u2022 has a veterinarian conduct a hands-on physical and dental exam once every three years.<\/p>\n
Breeders are required to report serious injuries or medical conditions to veterinarians and are prohibited from performing surgeries on animals.<\/p>\n
The state Department of Agriculture can deny licensure to any breeder who has had his or her license revoked or has been accused of animal cruelty in another state. A process to appeal any state Department of Agriculture licensure ruling also is included in the bill.<\/p>\n
Senators passed the bill on a 45-3 vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Commercial dog breeders must meet stronger licensing requirements under a bill passed by the Legislature March 1. A commercial dog<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[119],"class_list":["post-6704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agriculture","tag-sen-abbie-cornett"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6704"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6731,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6704\/revisions\/6731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}