Prairie Dog - in Captivity

In Captivity

Until 2003, primarily black-tailed prairie dogs were collected from the wild for the exotic pet trade in Canada, the United States, Japan, and Europe. They were removed from their underground burrows each spring, as young pups, with a large vacuum device. They can be difficult to breed in captivity, but breed well in zoos. Removing them from the wild was a far more common method of supplying the market demand.

They can be difficult pets to care for, requiring regular attention and a very specific diet of grasses and hay. Each year, they go into a period called rut that can last for several months, in which their personalities can drastically change, often becoming defensive or even aggressive. Despite their needs, prairie dogs are very social animals and come to seem as though they treat humans as members of their colony, answering barks and chirps, and even coming when called by name.

In mid-2003, due to cross-contamination at a Madison, Wisconsin-area pet swap from an unquarantined Gambian pouched rat imported from Ghana, several prairie dogs in captivity acquired monkeypox, and subsequently a few humans were also infected. This led the CDC and FDA to issue a joint order banning the sale, trade, and transport within the United States of prairie dogs (with a few exceptions). The disease was never introduced to any wild populations. The European Union also banned importation of prairie dogs in response. While largely seen by exotic pet owners and vendors as unfair, the monkeypox scare was not the only zoonosis incident associated with prairie dogs.

All Cynomys species are classed as a "prohibited new organism" under New Zealand's Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act 1996, preventing it from being imported into the country.

Prairie dogs are also very susceptible to bubonic plague, and many wild colonies have been wiped out by it. Also, in 2002, a large group of prairie dogs in captivity in Texas were found to have contracted tularemia. The prairie dog ban is frequently cited by the CDC as a successful response to the threat of zoonosis.

Prairie dogs that were in captivity at the time of the ban in 2003 were allowed to be kept under a grandfather clause, but were not to be bought, traded, or sold, and transport was permitted only to and from a veterinarian under quarantine procedures.

On September 8, 2008, the FDA and CDC rescinded the ban, making it once again legal to capture, sell, and transport prairie dogs, effective immediately. Although the federal ban has been lifted, several states still have in place their own ban on prairie dogs.

The European Union did not take action on the ban to import from the US animals captured in the wild, which remains valid. Major European Prairie Dog Associations, such as AICDP, remain against import from the US, due to the high death rate of wild captures and . Several zoos in Europe have stable prairie dog colonies that generate enough supernumerary pups to saturate the EU internal demand, and several associations help owners to give adoption to captivity-born animals.

Prairie dogs in captivity may live up to eight years.