Ridglan Farms to Sell 1,500 Beagles to Rescue Groups for Adoption as Wisconsin License Is Suspended

Ridglan Farms, a breeder of beagles for scientific experiments located in Blue Mounds, Wisconsin, reached an agreement on April 30 to sell 1,500 beagles to Big Dog Rescue and the Center for a Humane Economy. The dogs are being adopted out to families across the country. Ridglan Farms has an additional 500 beagles that may be freed at a later date.

The final price paid was not publicly disclosed. The deal capped years of pressure on the facility. In 2025, Ridglan Farms was hit with hundreds of citations from the state of Wisconsin for violating animal welfare laws.

It agreed to a settlement with Wisconsin that suspended its license to breed and sell beagles beginning in July. The facility manager had his veterinarian's license revoked for delegating eye surgeries on dogs without anesthesia performed by employees without veterinary licenses.

Negotiations between Ridglan Farms and the Center for a Humane Economy to release dogs for adoption began around the time of the 2025 Wisconsin settlement.

Ridglan Farms initially wanted $3 million to release the beagles. The initial offer on the table during negotiations was closer to $150,000, according to Aidan Kankyoku. Activists escalated their campaign this year.

On a March morning in 2026, activists broke into one of Ridglan's six buildings housing beagles using a crowbar and carried out dozens of dogs. In April 2026, activists planned a larger break-in at Ridglan Farms involving stripping chain link fences with wire cutters, cutting reinforced doors with angle grinders, and using firefighter tools.

They surveyed Ridglan Farms with drones for months and studied images with structural engineers ahead of the April 2026 action.

Activists trained for the April 2026 breach by practicing with saws, firefighting tools, rolling hay bales, and scaling them with hooks in a rented home garage and a field outside a barn. Jason Mills, a former Mixed Martial Arts cage fighter who makes fuel tanks for a living, led training on breaking through doors with power tools for the April 2026 Ridglan action.

Ridglan Farms dug manure-filled trenches and erected a wall of hay bales around the property ahead of the April 2026 activist action.

More than a thousand activists gathered outside Ridglan Farms in April 2026. During the action, Jason Mills was maced from three directions at short range, shot by rubber bullets and pepper balls. A handful of activists who got through the fence were maced by police and arrested.

Police lobbed tear gas at activists every few minutes during the April 2026 Ridglan Farms action and issued no warnings to protesters before using tear gas. The April 2026 open rescue attempt at Ridglan Farms failed within less than half an hour. No beagles were saved during the action.

Lara Trump is President Trump's daughter-in-law and a board member of Big Dog Rescue. In an Instagram post on the night of the failed April 2026 open rescue, Lara Trump said the facility should take an offer of $1 million in exchange for the animals. The agreement comes as opposition to animal testing draws support across the political spectrum.

0 eliminated an agency animal testing mandate that had been in place for the better part of a century. White Coat Waste was instrumental in defunding dog and cat testing at the Veterans Administration, Department of Defense, and Department of Agriculture.

U.S. Scientists experiment on tens of millions of animals a year. U.S. experiments are fish, mice, and birds, which are exempt from animal welfare regulations and reporting requirements.

About 62,000 dogs and cats are used in experiments annually. The animal experimentation industry is almost entirely government-financed, mostly from the National Institutes of Health, which has a budget of close to $50 billion a year. Between 40% and 50% of NIH grants go to experiments involving animal subjects.

Federal rules under the Animal Welfare Act require a dog's cage to be only six inches taller and longer than the dog itself. If a dog's cage is twice as big as the dog, the animal is exempted from any exercise requirement under federal rules. " She added that decades of research show abnormal behaviors in Ridglan beagles are clear indicators of compromised well-being and severe psychological distress.

Wayne Pacelle said, "You do have moments that define the progress of a cause. " Dr. Mihael H. " Sen. Rand Paul has formally decried the "cruel and inhumane" experiments conducted on beagles. " NIH has pledged to move away from animal testing.

The FDA has established a roadmap to reduce animal testing. The Department of Defense, under Secretary Pete Hegseth, ended animal testing at the urging of Laura Loomer.

U.S. Attorneys, federal marshals, and officials from the Department of Agriculture. White Coat Waste tracked Ridglan beagles to an ongoing experiment at the University of Missouri in which tick containment chambers are glued to puppies so that mutant ticks can feed on them for a week with no pain relief medication. Ridglan dogs are currently being used in respiratory safety drug toxicity tests.

Com reported that the hard-won concession was made possible by an unlikely alliance of advocates from the left and right.