Pound Adoption Group Size Getting Smaller?

[Pallastronomy]

For the past two days, I've noticed something strange; the number of pets in the adoption group for the pound during each opening has lowered from around 1000 to 700-800, and it's been this low consistently for the past two or so days. Multiple people have pointed it out in the pound pets thread, so I know it's not just me, but I haven't seen the staff mention anything about it anywhere. Is this lowering of the size of the adoption group intentional? If so, is the change going to be permanent?

[Keir;]

If you want a direct answer from staff, you're best bet would be to send in a help ticket

However, this isn't the first time the adoption group size has been reduced, it happened a few years ago as well. When I first joined the site, the pound's adoptions group was closer to 1.5k-2k per opening, it was only in the last couple years that it was reduced to closer 1k. The reason being that.. the pound is simply starting to run out of pets. And to prevent it from running out completely, the number of pets per opening was reduced - it's probably the same thing this time.

[rileypillow]

Last few times this happened, I noticed an unusually high number of users (about 1000 users) at the Pound opening. It started at the usual number, which is about 1000, but it quickly went down to 400 within the first minute. Once the Pound was closed, the amount of users halved. I did notice the group size was very small, but perhaps it’s because of the amount of people? I have no clue and I’m just as confused as everyone else, but I thought this may be useful :)
Update: The adoption size today is 682, unusually small. This isn’t great combined with the unusually high amount of users (600, compared to the usual 300 at this time of day) at the opening, so hopefully there will be the usual number next opening.

[GoldieDoggy]

The most recent opening had around 500 pets starting out, over 1000 people active. It's really weird, especially since the pound is shown as having tons of pets in the unsorted area