Big Dog Ranch Rescue buys nearly 1,500 Ridglan Farms beagles
Big Dog Ranch Rescue and the Center for a Humane Economy said on April 29, 2026, that they agreed to buy nearly 1,500 beagles from ridglan farms in Blue Mounds, Wisconsin. The dogs are set to leave within days for rescue facilities in Florida and Alabama, a move that covers most of the roughly 2,000 research beagles kept there.
Lauree Simmons on the deal
Lauree Simmons, the rescue’s president and founder, said the agreement would move the dogs out of the breeding facility and into care for adoption. “It’s a very big win and I am ecstatic to have these dogs out and get them into loving homes,” she said after the announcement.
She said the animals will first get medical exams, microchips and vaccinations before they are assessed for adoption. “These dogs need to learn to walk on a leash,” Simmons said. “They need to learn to live in a home environment, be housebroken, spayed and neutered.”
Blue Mounds and the April 18 clash
The agreement is confidential and the price was not disclosed. Big Dog Ranch Rescue said its facility in Loxahatchee, Florida, is the largest cage-free, no-kill dog rescue operation in the country, and the dogs will also be taken to partner agencies and to its facilities in Florida and Alabama.
The deal follows a confrontation at Ridglan Farms on April 18, 2026, when about 1,000 activists came to the rural Blue Mounds site. Police repelled them with tear gas, rubber bullets and pepper spray, and the Dane County Sheriff’s Department said 29 people were arrested and five face felony burglary charges.
Ridglan Farms beagles
Animal activists had spent 10 years pressing for the dogs at Ridglan Farms to be adopted rather than sold to other research facilities. Simmons pointed to that pressure after the announcement, saying, “What they did was put the message out.” She also said, “What we did, we wanted to do legally and in the best way and for the best outcome of these dogs for the future.”
The main change now is immediate: nearly three-quarters of the farm’s research beagles are headed out of the facility and into rescue hands within days. For people tracking the case, the remaining dogs were not addressed in the agreement, so the focus now shifts to transport, veterinary intake and adoption screening.
