I found this article VERY interesting.....check out who owned a 4 year old tiger that weighed 100 pounds that should have weighed 400...........
An unnatural fate
St. Petersburg Times; St. Petersburg, Fla.; May 27, 2001; LINDA GIBSON;
Abstract:
[Janie], a white Siberian tiger; Taking a cruise last weekend on Lake Seminole are, cubs Teddy and Emily, 5 months and about 75 pounds, and Nini, 11 months and 150 pounds, with owner [Vernon Yates], and his girlfriend Tina Pennington.; This tiger cub,; one of a litter of three - she yellow, the other two white males - was born in December at Wild Bill's Airboat Tours and Wildlife Sanctuary in Inverness.; [Susan MacKay] of Inverness holds a Siberian tiger cub; Photo: PHOTO, JILL SAGERS, (2); PHOTO, STEVE HASEL, (2)
On Jan. 6, the St. Petersburg Times ran a picture of an Inverness woman bottle-feeding a couple of 4-week-old tiger cubs, who at that age were cute enough to soften the hardest heart.
The photo featured Susan MacKay, who along with her husband, Bill, runs Wild Bill's Airboat Tours and Wildlife Sanctuary in Citrus County, where they breed tigers.
Readers probably assumed cubs at the sanctuary would stay there for a safe, comfortable life. In reality, they are for sale. And their futures, particularly those of the distinctive-looking white tiger cubs, are fraught with hazard.
Until a few years ago, white tiger cubs were one of the hottest commodities in the wildlife trade. People who work with captive wildlife say a blue-eyed white cub could fetch a price of $50,000 or more.
High prices encouraged frenzied breeding. Females can give birth to litters of two to three cubs up to three times a year. The result is a glut of tiger cubs, both white and yellow. Predictably, prices have plunged. Below is white tiger at Wild Bill's.
"They were rare. Now everybody's got them," said Mitchel Kalmanson, an insurance broker in Maitland who specializes in animal and entertainment coverage. "Values have dropped so drastically on white tigers they're not worth insuring anymore."
Now that their dollar value has plummeted, their prospects are gloomy.
Exact numbers are impossible to obtain, but owners of wildlife sanctuaries say there are far more cubs available than suitable places for them to live. Some are bought by people who think they can make pets of them. Sellers often encourage this misperception.
"They get sold to somebody who may be buying them with some degree of innocence," said Lynn Cuny, founder of Wildlife Rescue & Rehabilitation in Boerne, Texas. "They'll be given a false bill of goods about how these animals will behave. People really believe that in 10 generations you can breed out millions of years of being an elusive carnivore."
Cuny says she knows of one dealer who tells potential buyers the animals will remain tame if they're not fed red meat.
The quest for valuable cubs led to inbreeding of mothers with sons, brothers with sisters. As a result, many white tiger cubs are born with deformities of the eyes, organs, skeletons or digestive tracts. Because of those conditions, "They have absolutely no conservation value whatsoever," said Ronald Tilson, a Minnesota Zoo executive who coordinates the American Zoo and Aquarium Association's species survival plan for tigers.
In nature, white tigers are rare. Both parents must carry a recessive gene for that color. Normal tiger behavior in the the wild prevents the kind of inbreeding necessary to produce white cubs.
Once captive-bred cubs are grown and become problems for private owners, they face even bleaker prospects. Most zoos and circuses breed their own cats. Sanctuaries already are full of castoffs and routinely turn down people who offer to donate the tigers they bought as cubs.
"We had to turn away 311 cats last year, mostly lions and tigers," said Carole Lewis, founder of Big Cat Rescue, a sanctuary for big cats in north Hillsborough County.
So what happens when the owners can no longer handle them?
"They end up in roadside zoos where they'll probably live a wretched life," Tilson said.
"If they're lucky, people might call a vet and arrange a humane death," Cuny said.
Janie's story is an example of what can happen to a white tiger cub.
When she arrived in 1997 at a wildlife sanctuary run by Vernon Yates of Seminole, she was 4 years old and should have weighed about 400 pounds.
She weighed 100 pounds.
"Janie could hardly hold her head up," Yates said. "You know what a greyhound looks like? You could see her ribs. We didn't even have to hold her down to put an IV in her."
Janie's owner, Bruce Eisenmann, sent her to Yates on orders from an inspector with the state Wildlife Commission. She was one of three tigers in Eisenmann's possession in Alva, near Fort Myers. The inspector found the cats after a neighbor complained. All were emaciated, with hairless patches of skin and open sores, according to wildlife commission records.
Through his company, Tiger Rescue Foundation, Eisenmann got the tigers to display at schools, churches, nursing homes and civic associations. In June 1997, he pleaded no contest to a charge of animal cruelty and was put on probation.
Yates said Eisenmann told him the tigers had been ill.
"We could never find anything wrong except not enough food," Yates said.
Eisenmann has moved from Florida, according to his mother in South Carolina. Contacted there, Louise Eisenmann said her son was too ill to discuss the matter. She did not elaborate.
Eisenmann's Tiger Rescue Foundation no longer exists. Because nobody ever paid Janie's boarding bill, Yates says, the tiger still lives with him.
So do Nikita and Natasha, whose Jacksonville owner gave up on them as pets; Sunny, the pet of a Fort Lauderdale man who got scared of her; Roslyn, another ex-pet; Calvin, a pet who was going to be euthanized because of medical problems; and Hobbes, who was given to Yates in a shoebox a few hours after his birth; and a number of cubs.
Kalmanson said at least a dozen people in Florida breed white tigers for sale.
The MacKays advertise their cubs in a trade magazine called Animal Finders Guide. Among listings for elk calves, albino groundhogs, wolf cubs and wallabies is theirs:
Two male white and one natural color female tiger babies. Raised in our home on bottles with lots of love, they are real sweet. White tiger babies have blue eyes. Another litter due April 1.
McKay said he hopes to sell the white cubs for $10,000 each.
When the cubs are small, they're so cute and playful that some people find them irresistible.
But, says Lewis, "After a year or so, people realize they make horrible pets."
As sexual maturity nears, tigers experience a growth spurt and a change in behavior that can stun unwary owners.
"Suddenly, this person has a several-hundred-pound carnivorous animal in their home," Cuny said. "It's not uncommon for people to have dogs, cats and children in the same home."
Even Yates, who runs the wildlife sanctuary, has had difficulty managing his tigers. Twice in a year, they have had litters of cubs unexpectedly, which he acknowledges shouldn't have happened. He said he plans to castrate the males or get contraceptive implants for the females. He plans to keep the cubs, not sell them.
There's one other issue. If tigers aren't suitable pets, what message does Yates send by taking them for rides on his boat?
"It is a problem," he said. "When people see that, they see the good side. But I tell them, 'You're not seeing the other side. These are large animals, and they can hurt you.' "
Yates has a state license to keep tigers and tells people it's illegal to keep them without one.
The challenges grow along with the animal.
"How do you get a 500-pound tiger to the vet? We have people call us all the time asking, 'How can we do it?' " Lewis said.
People also fail to consider that the vet who treats their dogs and cats probably doesn't have any experience with tigers.
Tigers live for up to 20 years, Yates said. They're noisy even after being spayed or neutered. They eat 15 to 20 pounds of raw meat a day.
One of MacKay's tigers weighs around 800 pounds.
"He's very friendly," MacKay said, "but he's testy if you turn your back on him. He'll come for you like you're a toy. He could crush me in a heartbeat."
He has been hurt just once, he said, when one of his tigers gave him a "love bite."
"Just a 14-stitcher," MacKay said. "He put his mouth around my ankle and didn't release his grip."
Although MacKay gave an initial interview to the Times about raising cubs, he later would not respond to telephone and fax inquiries regarding the advisability of breeding them or criticisms of the practice by others.
Once owners decide their "pet" isn't working out, they discover how hard it is to get rid of a grown tiger.
"The first thing they'll do is call the local zoo," Cuny said. "Nine times out of 10, the zoo says, 'No thanks.' Then they'll call animal control, which tells them to try a sanctuary. The sanctuary will most likely say, 'We'd love to help you but we're full.' Or, 'We're a non-profit. We can take it if you can contribute several thousand dollars toward its lifetime care.' "
In Florida, it's against the law to own a tiger as a pet. But there are loopholes. If you're going to use a tiger for some commercial purpose, such as as a mascot for a business, or to educate the public, or to be photographed for movies or commercials, you can get a license to own a tiger. The animals also can be sold to buyers from states that don't regulate private ownership of non-native wildlife, such as Texas or Alabama.
But even within Florida, enforcement is scattered. Florida's Wildlife Commission has only 10 investigators to cover the entire state.
"People hide them from inspectors," Kalmanson said. "They get thrown in cages that are too small."
Some people who buy or sell tiger cubs tend to be secretive. Even if properly licensed, they don't want to attract attention from neighbors or animal-rights activists.
One seller with an ad in Animal Finders Guide listed four Siberian tiger cubs, born April 20, as free to a good home. She listed a phone number in the 727 area code.
She abruptly hung up when she learned her caller was a reporter.
St. Petersburg Times staff writer Linda Gibson can be reached at (813) 226-3382.
