Animal Adoption Center of Blount County

Shelter Data

The Animal Census Reporting Act (Alabama Code §§ 3-10) requires animal shelters to compile a monthly report of shelter data. The data below is from the Blount County shelter’s monthly reports.

Looking for 2026 data? Here it is, thanks to AAC Director Karen Startley.

Intake

Intake is a tally of pets taken in by the shelter. Blount County takes in animals via the following three routes:

• Owner Surrenders are pets taken in at the request of the owner. The shelter is under no obligation to accept surrenders.
• Strays are pets impounded by animal control officers or brought in by residents. The shelter is required to intake strays.
• Seized pets are removed from the owner by an officer in accordance with the custody procedure delineated in Cruelty to Dog or Cat § 13A-11-240 et seq. Seized pets cannot leave the shelter except by court order. The shelter has, thus far, categorized seized pets as strays, so it has not been possible to track the number of seized pets.

Small species (like hamsters and rabbits) are included in the totals for 2022 (10), 2023 (5), and 2024 (6), so those numbers can be added so that the totals add up. Since 2025, AAC data has tracked only canine and feline intake.

Extremely High Intake: Animal Adoption Center of Blount County intake in 2022 to 2025 has ranged from 33 to 43 animals per 1,000 residents. This is an extremely high per capita intake compared to shelters nationwide, according to Best Friends 2021 data, even accounting for the expected higher intake in rural and poorer areas. Best Friends recorded an average intake of 25.5 animals per 1,000 residents for counties matching Blount’s highly rural, moderately socially vulnerable status.

Upward Trend: The already-high intake increased 30% from 2022 to 2024. Intake in 2025, while lower than 2024, still surpassed 2022 and 2023.

What Can the Animal Adoption Center of Blount County Do to Reduce Intakes? Even comunities with higher intake rates have succeeded in securing live outcomes for well above 90% of pets. But the higher the intake, the greater the challenge. The AAC has the opportunity to reduce intake through:

• High Volume, Low-Cost Spay & Neuter: Blount County residents have many options for low-cost sterilization, and the AAC reports that nearly all pets adopted from the shelter are now sterilized prior to release to their new family.
• Cat TNR Programs: Trap, neuter, return (TNR) is the only effective and humane method of stabilizing populations of feral and friendly community cats. Though TNR funding is available, Karen reports that residents do not want cats to be removed, and Blount County acts accordingly — which means ending many cats’ lives.
• Pet Retention Programs: Surrender counseling leads people to keep their pets more than half of the time. Food banks, trainer referrals, grants for vet care, short term foster plans, and pet help desks are also instrumental. The AAC does no meaningful surrender counseling, the number of accepted owner surrenders is high and rising, and pets are accepted from other counties all while increasing numbers of animals die at the AAC.
• Proactive Redemptions: A large number of animals that end up in shelters are actually family pets. Some may be rehomed, others destroyed without their family’s knowledge. Blount County has the opportunity to encourage microchipping (such as by holding an at-cost or sponsored microchip event and including microchipping with adoption) to raise the reportedly low percentage of county pets that have a microchip and to facilitate the reunion of pets with their owners — especially while still in the field (without a trip to the shelter). Currently, animals are scanned for microchips only once they arrive at the shelter.

Intake by Owner Surrender

The number of pets surrendered by their owners to the AAC doubled between 2022 and 2025. (Some of the difference could be due to changes in recording, since there is gray area in determining whether to consider an intake to be of an owned pet or of a stray.) The AAC has no obligation to accept surrenders and could implement surrender counseling and other programs, as noted just above, to significantly reduce this category of intake.

Intake of Strays

Stray intake increased 21% between 2022 and 2024. 2025 saw a substantial decline in intake attributed to strays; however, surrenders increased by the same amount.

Outcomes, 2022 to 2025

Blount County Animal Adoption Center recorded 2,289 total outcomes in 2025, with a 75% overall live release rate.

• Outcomes represent pets who have left the shelter.
• Live Outcomes include:
  • Adopted pets go home with individuals and families who come to the shelter from Blount County and sometimes other areas.
  • Rescued pets are taken in by nonprofit rescue organizations and sometimes transported to other areas of the US and even internationally.
  • Reclaimed pets are reunited with their owner.
  • Cat TNR (trap, neuter, return) is another possible live outcome; however 2025 shelter data indicates no utilization of TNR.
• Non-Live Outcomes include:
  • Died in Care is the number of animals who died in the shelter from other causes.
  • Other Non-Live includes euthanasia of irremediably suffering animals and killing for reasons unrelated to the animal’s health or behavior. (The shelter does not accept pets for owner-requested euthanasia.)
• Live Release is the percentage of pets who left the shelter alive. This rate is calculated by dividing live outcomes by total outcomes.

The percentage of live outcomes decreased 15% from 2022 to 2025. In 2025, adoptions and reclaims reached a four-year low, and reliance on nonprofit rescue organizations hit at a four-year high. In a repeat of 2024, 25% of animals that entered the AAC did not survive the experience.

2025 Outcomes by Species

About the Data

Review the raw data as provided by Karen Startley, director of the Animal Adoption Center of Blount County, Alabama:

• 2026
• 2025
• 2024
• 2023
• 2022

The AAC transitioned to electronically-recorded data in 2025, which improved the consistency of the data as compared to previous years in which monthly and annual tallies were recorded by hand.