“Welcome back to the Breeder’s Brag, folks!” A tanned man wearing dark sunglasses despite being indoors smiled into the camera. “Today we’re getting exclusive access to the back end of the hottest mill on the block, Rainbow Acres!”
He gestured to the camera man, who turned to capture Daniel Turner smiling passively to his side. “Pleasure to meet you, Brock.”
They shook hands before Brock turned back to the camera. “So Daniel, you’ve expanded quite a bit since acquiring the dairy works, what’s the motivation?”
“Well I saw a hole in the market.” Daniel turned and gestured for the crew to follow him. “The dairy works was doing well, and with us breeding our own stock it seemed natural to move into the pet breeding market. I know fluffies can be a contentious topic and a hard livestock to handle, but if you remember that welfare is key you’ll be on the right track.”
“We hear a lot about welfare in the business, as I’m sure you know. Can you elaborate on that?”
Daniel smiled as he led them into a darkened room. “Of course. Fluffies are sensitive creatures, they have very specific needs. We try our best to keep them happy and we’ll cared for and so far it’s lead to excellent profits!”
He flipped a switch, and a window cleared, overlooking a large playpen. “These are our ready for adoption foals, we sell them a little older than most to ensure proper behaviors.”
Colts and fillies in bright colors scampered around on the padded floor. Every manor of toy was available to them, multiple games of kicky-ball we’re going on at once while others stacked blocks with rounded corners. An entire corner of the pen was walled off and filled with bright blue litter, after a young filly finished her business she skipped over to a red mare who gave her a tight hug before she returned to her play.
Brock whistled. “Quite the setup here, proper fluffy paradise!”
Daniel nodded. “This has been setup with the most up to date research on fluffy development. Active toys for proper muscle development, a large herd-like community to meet their social needs, we seek to meet all but one of their needs.”
Brock pressed his hands against the glass, scanning the room. “I don’t see any food available but that can’t be it.”
“No,” Daniel chuckled. “We do feed them a proprietary high-protein diet but the feeding station is below this window.”
After a moment of silence Brock stepped back from the window. “I’m also not seeing any workers.”
“Bingo. If you look you’ll see a handful of adults with small tags in their ears. These are our trainers, exemplary fluffies from our nursemare program that keep an eye on all the foals waiting for adoption.”
Brock gestured one of the camera men over. “Get some footage of them doing cute shit.”
While the cameras zoomed in on the fluffies playing happily together, Daniel continued. “We humans have no direct interaction with the fluffies between them leaving their mothers and their adoption day.”
“That’s…”
“Risky? Neglectful?”
Brock chuckled. “I was going to say interesting, but if the shoe fits…”
“We are very strict with our training program. Only the absolute best of the best end up staying at this level.” Daniel tapped one of the camera men on the shoulder and directed him to zoom in on a deep pink unicorn talking to a small group of gathered foals. “That little tag on their ears contains a small speaker, allowing observing staff to direct them from a distance.”
“Wow. And what happens when there are problems?” Brock asked. “Do the mares punish the foals as well?”
“Yes, but they have specific rules to follow themselves.” Daniel tapped another camera man, directing him to film a fat orange foal sobbing behind a wire door recessed into the wall.
“The mares know that all infractions result in a time-out. No sorry hoofsies, no bities, no kickies. Observing staff will determine how long the foal needs to stay depending on what happened.”
“And you have someone watching… always?”
“Yes. There is not a moment that these foals aren’t supervised. Even at night, we have a very nice low-light camera system for when the lights go off.”
Brock whistled. “That must have cost a pretty penny.”
“Well, you know the saying. Spending money to make money and all that.” Daniel waved his hand dismissively. “If you want to produce the best, you need to use the best tools.”
“So… why?” Brock asked as one of the camera men turned to film the two of them talking.
“Well, fluffies are social creatures, as we all know.” Daniel folded his hands behind his back as he turned to look over the playpen. “When they leave this place they will miss their siblings, their friends, their mother. After some testing and research from the lab we found that the negative feelings upon adoption were significantly lowered when they had not imprinted on any of our staff.”
“Imprinted? Like… a baby bird?”
“Sort of!” Daniel chuckled. “Fluffies want to be loved by humans. They’ll do just about anything for that love, it doesn’t matter what you are to them. They don’t want for anything but an owner here, and so when they get one it will be the greatest thing in the world to them.” He grinned over his shoulder to the camera. “Better than spaghetti, I’ve even heard!”
Brock nodded slowly. “I’ve never seen a fully fluffy run discipline system end well. You usually have at least one fluffy getting it into their head that they should be in charge and acting out.”
“Oh, I’m sure others have failed miserably. Our fluffies are under constant surveillance, and the supervisors can both communicate with the mares directly and inflict a small corrective shock through the ear tag if needed.”
“And how often is it needed, on average?”
“It’s not often, but most get between 1-3 during their time in the playpens. The vast majority stay here for the rest of their lives, but any who get to an advanced age are offered up for staff adoption before we list them on the website with the other fluffies. They make excellent companions if you want to raise a particularly young foal!”
Brock nodded, arms crossed as he watched the foals play. A blue mare’s head shot up as she listened to the observer speaking through her ear tag. She then ran off to the far side of the pen to separate two foals arguing over a plush rabbit. She scolded them, her voice too soft to hear through the window, and both foals hung their heads in shame before going their separate ways.
“What happens to the ones that need to be punished?”
“Well, most foals are corrected by a quick time out.” As if on cue, the mesh door lowered on the orange foal’s time out pen and he rushed out to rejoin the fun. “If a certain foal has repeated offenses within a short amount of time, they’re temporarily taken off the adoption page until behavior improves. Some need to grow out of bad behavior before they’re up to our standards.”
“And what happens to foals that never meet your standards?”
Daniel sighed heavily. “It’s a hard thing, but we do occasionally have to euthanize for behavioral reasons. It’s rare and only in extreme cases. We have a training program for problem fluffies as well as offering them for staff adopting but…” He shook his head. “You can’t save them all.”
After a moment of silence he turned back to Brock and the cameramen. “Do any of your boys need to stay behind to film? The mare pens are just down the hall here.” Daniel said.
Brock looked to his crew who gave him curt nods one by one. “Nah, we got what we need.”
“Perfect. Right this way then gentlemen!” Daniel led them out of the observation room and down a well lit hallway.
“Now I have to ask, what happens when a foal is unsellable?” Brock asked.
“Well, we don’t have all to many of those.”
“But you do have them.”
Daniel sighed. “An unfortunate truth to any biotoy industry, there will be some foals that don’t meet standard. Best to discuss this before reaching the mare pens.”
He stopped in front of a door plastered with protocol sheets and watnings, leaning against it as he shook his head sadly.
“The raw fact of this industry is that you can do everything right and you’ll still have a handful of fluffies that just aren’t what they need to be. Health issues are easy, we either treat them or if our vets determine they wouldn’t have a quality of life or the treatment would be too harsh we euthanize.”
“And bad colors?” Brock asked. “The pen down there didn’t have a single brown, there’s no way your breeding stock is that good.”
“Oh, that’s a non-issue.” Daniel pulled out his phone, the Rainbow Acres adoption page already opened in his browser. “The males that don’t meet our visual standards are offered as discount “buddies” for our other adoptions. We find that solo fluffies are more likely to act out due to boredom and loneliness, so it’s really a win-win. The females are brought to our dairy works. There’s no color-based culling here!”
Brock looked over the discounted colts, each one pictured in a unique pose to best show off their personality. “Why do you keep them separate? Aren’t you worried about the fluffy’s colorism?”
“We have separate pens for adult fluffies, split by sex. We do not allow adult males to be around any female, regardless of neutering.” Daniel grimaced. “Too many risks of incidents, if you catch my drift. Any off-color males have their own pen until they’re grown, where they’re added into the adult population.”
“Ah. Yeah, that makes sense.”
“Now,” he pulled open the door, calm instrumental music leaking into the hallway as he ushered Brock and his crew in. “these are the mare pens, where the foals stay until they’re weaned.”
Daniel led the party down the hallway slowly, letting them pause at the windows looking into the plexiglass mare pens. Brock paused at one of the pens, where a golden yellow mare played ball with a threesome of matching pale blue foals.
“You’ve got some… interesting color spreads in these litters.” Brock said, moving to the next pen where a pink mare napped with a pair of bright orange foals against her side. “Or more accurately, a lack thereof. What gives?”
Daniel nodded. “We have a proprietary artificial insemination system.”
“Care to tell us about it?”
“Sorry.” You shrugged. “If I went around telling everyone industry secrets, I might be out of a job!”
“Hm.” Brock thought for a moment, then turned to his camera crew. “Get some footage of the mares playing and then go back to the playpen. I want to have an off-camera chat with Mr. Turner.”
Daniel watched curiously as the camera crew spread out, each filming a different fluffy family.
“Now,” Brock said, a hungry smile on his lips. “What would it take for me to learn more about these industry secrets?”
“I’m sorry, I need to protect my company from copycats.” Daniel returned his smile before turning and beginning to walk down further down the hallway.
After a moment of tapping on his phone, Brock spoke again. “There. 2k should have been wired to you.”
Daniel checked his phone, nodding at the notification. “That’s a very kind donation but I’m afraid I just can’t let these things get out. What would the public think?”
“Ah.” Brock nodded as he understood the hidden meaning. After a bit more tapping he smiled up. “There’s something that might help you trust me.”
Daniel opened the message he received to reveal a picture of Brock, splattered with blood and holding a skinned and gutted fluffy up in the way one would hold a particularly large fish they caught.
“My buddy runs this contest every year for dressing a fluffy.” Brock explained, setting a hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “It would be a real problem if that were to get out, it would ruin my reputation as an ethical fluffy breeder, you know?”
Daniel grinned as he tucked his phone back into his breast pocket. “I think you and I are going to get along just fine.” He motioned for Brock to follow him to the door at the end of the hall.
“Down here is our breeding room. Pregnant mares and ones that have just given birth stay here.” He pushed open the door as a blast of warm air washed over them.
Almost immediately the mood soured, large industrial machinery roared and fluffies wailed, exposed metal support beams bounced the sound around the space into a miserable whirlwind of noise. They stepped onto a pathway clearly designated with yellow tape on the texture metal floor, a grate and drain system on either side below stacks of cages just large enough to hold a single, limbless fluffy.
“Wow, this is…” Brock trailed off, crouching down to get a closer look at a trembling blue mare. “I should have known all that shit about welfare was crap.”
“Not entirely crap.” Daniel clarified. “We do make sure the foals that leave here live their best fluffy lives. These mares, however, will never see anything but these cages until they have a date with the grinder.”
“Ahhh… high protein diet…” He chuckled to himself. “Should have known. Mummah gets fed to her babbehs, huh?”
The blue mare sobbed in fear as Daniel nodded. “It’s quite efficient and fairly safe as long as the feed is pasteurized correctly.”
“And the mares out in the hallway are just nursemares, then?”
“Yes. Any fillies that end up sterile get put through training to see if they’ll make good nursemares. They produce milk from hormones in their food, we can’t do that to our dairy mares for regulation reasons so we have no use for them there.”
“Makes sense.” Brock stood and leaned against the wall of cages, doing a quick count of the numerous fluffies in the space. “Quite a system you got here. The foals with the milkmares were all sorted by color, what gives?”
“You might want to let go of the cages, Brock.” Daniel put his hands over his ears.
He frowned in confusion as a horn blast startled him, making him jump back from the cage wall. All at once every fluffy in the room screamed, twitching uncontrolably. After a moment the fluffies fell silent, flopping limply into their cages.
“What in the fuck was that?!” Brock said, stepping back cautiously from the cages.
“Electrical system.” Daniel pointed to a clock on the wall labeled with thick red lines. “It’s a regular system that gives them a painful shock every time the horn goes off. Fluffies can’t tell time, so it feels completely random to them.”
“But… why?”
“Have you read into selective abortions in fluffies?”
“I mean… I’ve heard of it, but I thought it was medically complex.”
Daniel shook his head. “No, not a medical abortion.” He started down the walkway, past fluffies sobbing about “shocky hurties” and begging Brock to rescue them. “Fluffies are odd creatures with complex genomes. It’s rather hard to predict what you’ll get from a pair. A couple of boys in my lab came up with a theory that mares could be artificially given an autoimmune condition through medication that would self-abort any foal that didn’t share their features.”
Brock blinked slowly. “But… wouldn’t that leave you with less foals? You can’t confirm that they’ll look like her.”
“Ah, but we rarely get unexpected foals.” Daniel stopped at a pure white mare near the top of the cage stack, watching impassionately as she sobbed about the bloody fetal forms on the floor of the cage behind her. “This mare will not complete a pregnancy until she’s going to give us at least one white foal. Because she self-aborts, it only takes about a week of care between breedings unless she’s got something worth selling in her. When she does hold on to a litter it’s on the smaller side which minimizes the risk of runts or deformed foals while also putting less physical strain on her internals, allowing for more foals to be produced before she’s spent."
Brock whistled, looking over the miserable mare. “That apply to alicorns as well?”
“It absolutely does."
“So what does the shocking do, induce labor?”
“That, but mostly it causes stress.” Daniel walked down the line a little further, stopping at a cherry-red mare that pressed her nose against the bars.
“Pwease sabe fwuffy!!” She pleaded. “Am soon mummah! Am guud fwuffy! Nu wan’ shockies!!”
“The idea came from observing ferals, mares that underwent considerable stress tended to have smaller litters that contained more foals that matched the mare. The lab figured out that the mare was cannibalizing unwanted foals to feed the ones her immune system liked better.” Daniel opened the cage, setting a hand on the red mare’s head. “With some specialized medication added to their food, we can kick that into overdrive, making it so they only keep matching foals to term. We don’t medicate our alicorns, however. Just the stress is enough.”
“How… what’s the medication?!” Brock asked. “I need to get me some of that!”
“I’m sure we can work something out.” Daniel smiled as he patted the mare.
“Be nyu daddeh?” She asked.
“No.” Daniel pulled his hand back and flicked her on the nose hard enough to send a small splatter of blood across the back of his hand. He wiped it off on the wailing fluffy’s mane and shoved her back into the cage, latching it behind her.
“So is the shock system enough stress?” Brock asked, tapping furiously away on his phone. “I assume pillowing is required as well.”
“Yes, but we also have someone come through and spray each cage down with a hose rather than a manure removal system.”
“How do you keep them from drowning?”
“Spray from the back of the cage forward. It’s apparently even more uncomfortable for them, getting their own waste all over them, as well as keeping the dumb fucks from drowning.” Daniel turned back towards the doorway. “Gal named Tricia came up with the system, it’s as much stress we can put them under without killing them. She’s quite the… researcher, let’s say.”
“She sounds hot, she single?”
Daniel gave Brock a withering glance. “You don’t even know what she looks like.”
“I know what I’m about.” He pulled a business card out of his pocket. “You do me a favor and pass that along to her, yeah?”
Daniel took the card, looking it over. “She could be 400 pounds and have three legs for all you know.”
“I’m a gambling man! I’ll take that chance.”
Daniel smiled, tucking the card into his breast pocket. “I’ll pass it along.” He paused at the doorway leading back to the mare pens. “And… next time your friend runs that fluffy dressing competition… keep me in mind, yes?”
Brock grinned, slapping Daniel on the back. “We’d be happy to have ya!”