Breaking: Ridglan Farms to Stop Breeding Dogs for Sales to Labs

Update (October 28, 2025): PETA is celebrating huge progress for dogs: Ridglan Farms has finally agreed to surrender its breeding license following determined efforts by Special Prosecutor Gruenke and compassionate advocates who refused to stay silent. Rather than face criminal charges, Ridglan says it will stop breeding dogs for sales to laboratories as of July 2026, sparing the beagles from torment and death in painful, pointless experiments. This hard-won progress also reflects the tireless work of Direct Action Everywhere, The Simple Heart, Dane4Dogs, the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project, and a coalition of animal protection groups, including PETA, united in ending cruelty.

The suffering documented at Ridglan was horrific—and with its head veterinarian stripped of his license, this shameful operation has lost all credibility. It’s time for Ridglan to shut down its testing facility entirely and give every dog the chance to live in a loving home, where comfort and kindness replace fear and confinement. PETA is ready to help.

It’s no secret that every dog breeder treats animals as disposable merchandise—but did you know there’s an entire industry built on mass-producing puppies for experimentation in laboratories? It’s true—these “dog farms” across the U.S. exist for one sole purpose: to supply dogs for experimenters to poison, mutilate, and kill in cruel tests.

Ridglan Farms is one of these dog factory farms. This massive breeding facility in Blue Mounds, Wisconsin, churns out beagles by the thousands, selling them to laboratories across the country—which have included Red Beast Enterprises (which absurdly calls itself High Quality Research), the subject of PETA’s 6-month undercover investigation released earlier this year, and even public institutions such as the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

“Man’s best friend” is bred into misery and sold to the highest bidder.

Ridglan Farms’ Abuse of Dogs, Specifically Gentle Beagles

This puppy factory farm is the second-largest operation in the U.S. that breeds beagle puppies specifically for experimentation—and not surprisingly, it’s riddled with alleged cruelty and neglect. In 2017, animal advocates from Direct Action Everywhere documented dogs confined to stacks of metal cages in a windowless shed. Beagles were kept in filth with untreated wounds and their feet were red and swollen from standing on wire floors. In 2024, a former Ridglan employee testified that they cut off swollen eyelid glands (a condition known as “cherry eye”) with a pair of scissors without any pain relief or a veterinary license.

Many dogs don’t even make it out of Ridglan’s factory farm alive. Records have revealed that nearly 275 beagles die each year while still at the breeding facility.

What Happens to Dogs If They Survive the Factory Farm?

Ridglan Farms is just the beginning of the cruel pipeline—the dogs who do survive the facility’s dismal conditions end up cut open, injected, and/or poisoned in laboratories.

At the University of Missouri, experimenters sickened or killed 40 healthy dogs from Ridglan in tick vaccine tests in which they glued disease-filled “tick containment chambers” to dogs’ skin and allowed ticks to feed on them for several days.

At the Illinois Institute of Technology, experimenters forced beagles to inhale an experimental COVID-19 drug before killing them.

University of Wisconsin–Madison Is Ridglan’s Client

According to public records obtained by Rise for Animals and the Marty Project, UW–Madison bought 19 dogs from Ridglan between January 2022 and July 2023. The university experiments on dogs, whose biology is nothing like that of humans, in dozens of painful, ineffective tests. About 90% of today’s basic “research,” most of which involves experiments on animals, fails to lead to effective treatments for humans. And 95% of new drugs that test safe and effective in animals fail in human trials.

How a Dog From Ridglan Got a New Beginning

Among the thousands of beagles Ridglan Farms bred and sold to laboratories is Temple. Ridglan shipped Temple off to High Quality Research in Colorado, where a PETA investigator found her cowering in a kennel, shaking in fear. Like he did to all dogs in the laboratory, the facility’s veterinarian cut her vocal cords without giving her any form of pain relief afterward. The laboratory confined Temple and other dogs to chain-link kennels in stark cinderblock rooms nearly 24/7.

Miraculously, we got Temple out of there. Two PETA staff members adopted her, and today, she enjoys a life of love, comfort, and care.

Ridglan Is Just One Breeding Hellhole

PETA is at the forefront of shutting this industry down. We have exposed several other seedy laboratory suppliers, including Envigo’s now-shuttered beagle breeding factory, where our undercover investigator documented apparent crimes against animals. After we released our investigator’s findings, the operation shut down, and officials liberated nearly 4,000 dogs from the facility. In October 2024, Envigo became the first-ever federally convicted supplier of animals for experimentation after it pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate the federal Animal Welfare Act. A grand jury also indicted Dawn Marie Gau, the former attending veterinarian at Envigo’s dog breeding operation, on 17 misdemeanor counts of cruelty to animals.

PETA’s efforts helped liberate those nearly 4,000 dogs—and with YOUR help, we can stop other breeding prisons like Ridglan and the labs they supply, sparing countless animals from lifelong suffering.

Will You Help Shut Down Dog-Tormenting Laboratories?

Dogs belong in loving homes, not laboratory cages waiting for the next cut or injection. YOU can help dogs by taking action against laboratories that use them in tests, like Blue Ridge Kennel: