World Animal Week

This week from the 4th to the 10th of October is World Animal Week. Last week I shared several posts from an animal sanctuary based in Kildare who were trying to rescue battery hens who were about to be destroyed. Battery hens are only productive from an economic point of view for a year or so. After this they begin to lay less frequently and so are destroyed. This means that every battery farm and this includes "free range" as in open the side of a shed of thousands of chickens who may or may not go out - are destroyed after a year of life.

A healthy hen is one who has a full body of shiny and fluffy feathers and an erect bright red comb. The comb is the on top of their head. These hens had bare bodies and floppy pale combs. How such unhealthy looking animals can lay healthy eggs is beyond me. How anyone would want to eat eggs from birds like these mystifies me. And yes I know they are cheap and so many are on a budget..... yada, yada, yada, yawn!

Photo from LittleHill Animal Sanctuary

As with everything in life, it's a question of priorities.

Then we come to the next animal reared in similar circumstances. The pig. Almost daily, pig transport lorries drive past my house and the stench lingers for ages afterwards. The pig is an incredibly clean animal. In a field it has a toilet area, a wallow area, a feeding area and each and every pig keeps a large circular area in front of their house undamaged. They don't root here, they don't use it as a toilet, they don't lie in it. I am convinced they do this in order to keep an area clean and dry as contrary to popular opinion they hate having wet dirty feet. I have seen piglets walk along under an electric fence rather than through a mucky patch.

Intensively reared pigs are forced to live in circumstances they would never live in by choice. So if these pigs are smeared in their own excrement in a transport lorry how can meat from these animals be healthy? The meat is infused with bacteria that you really do not want or need to eat. But you are advised to cook it well. Like all protein, overcooking makes it tough, dry and indigestible.

Treating meat animals badly is one thing. But even if you don't care about their welfare, surely you care about your own?

Most people if they thought about where the meat and the eggs they casually throw into their shopping trolley would be appalled. The vast majority probably consider themselves animal lovers and have pets at home. So why have double standards?

What you can do.

Ask in your local supermarket how free range that chicken is (free range by definition and by law is a very loose term open to exploitation). The more people who ask, the more the retailer will think. Customers have massive power. If only they realised it.

Ask why supermarkets don't sell free range pork and bacon. Ask this in your butchers as well. And if they try to pass off flabby, pale pork chops as free range tell them you know that genuinely free range pork is not pale in colour.

Ask in restaurants. After all they will be able to tell you what field your lump of steak came from.

Ask in cafes.


For this week alone just ask.

Honky Needs a Job

entente cordiale with the dogs

Honky Tonk is a 5 week old piglet who was rejected by her mother at birth. She then developed scour and had to be nursed back to health for the first 3 weeks of her life. She had to re-learn how to walk. She had been immobile for so long she seemed paralysed and at first I thought she had had a stroke due to dehydration. But slowly she recovered beginning to push herself up into a sitting position for her bottle. Then she began to stand on all four very wobbly legs, usually with temper when I washed her. Then she staggered a few paces towards her bottle.

Sitting up for her bottle

Outside completely helpless

Her first steps towards her bottle

She learned that the ping of the microwave means food

She soon rejected her piglet bed in my sun porch deciding she was more comfortable stretched in front of the stove in one of the dog's beds. Gradually I got her moved out into the kitchen with the dogs and then out into the downstairs bathroom. Mopping up the inevitable every morning was becoming very wearing. I tried to put her out in the makeshift run with her siblings during the day but they bullied her unmercilessly. Then I allowed them outside their run with some electric fencing but she just darted under the fence to get away from them.

Loubie Lou not impressed at her taking her bed

Last night as her siblings had been moved, she slept outside in their house in their run alone but with her dog bed and blankets on a big bed of straw. I went out to check her and she was warm and snug. Success but then when I opened the run she was straight up to the patio doors demanding to be let in, honking loudly. When she comes in she greets the weird cat and each dog individually with a quacking noise that we have come to realise is her "happy" sound. She tries out each of their beds individually, evicting them as she decides which bed she will settle in. Then she sleeps off her morning bottle for a couple of hours.

Honking to be let in with a mucky snout

An expert at making herself cosy

Now here is the thing. Honky needs a job. Honky will not become rashers and sausages. I couldn't bear to sell her or slaughter her. I could breed from her but our boar is her daddy and I have no intentions of feeding another boar. She needs to earn her keep.

Honky is used to dogs, cats, chickens, ducks, children and adults. She thinks she is one of the dogs. She robs their nuts out of their bowl when she thinks I'm not looking. She robs the chicken food. She knows her name and comes when she is called. If you lock her out one door she goes to the other.

Robbing chicken food as chickens look on

So come on anyone? A job for Honky? Film, TV, advertising, education.........

Can a piglet join Equity?

Ten and Honky Tonk

The Kells 12 are one month old today. The 12 are now sadly 11. Well 10 and Honky Tonk. (When my mother was a child her uncle when asked how many children he had always answered 9 and *Frankeen.)

I lost one little boy to the scourge that is scour. He literally melted in front of my eyes as he dehydrated and lost so much weight. I did my best to save him but despite rallying initially he just gave up. I was so sad because I have fed all of them from the day they were born and can tell them all apart and know their personalities.

I started them on solid food at two weeks old mixing organic chick starter with their milk. I couldn't get organic creep feed from my supplier despite them making loads of calls looking for it. The chick starter is 21% protein and it was what I used for the last litter. Initially they fell over it, walked in it, basically did everything but try to eat it. But then lo and behold on the second day the penny dropped. I am still giving them a bottle first thing in the morning and last thing at night because losing one so suddenly worried me. He had obviously not been eating although he had been having his milk in a bottle. I figured the last lot were with their mother eight weeks so it is no harm to keep it up. It actually doesn't take long as they all gulp down a bottle in jig time almost sucking the bottle inside out. Now a few of them have got really heavy for lifting and holding I'm not sure how much longer I can keep it up.

The sick boy and Honky Tonk

Lady Hope aka Honky Tonk

Lady Hope now known as Honky Tonk because of her continual honking and also because when we commented on it one night, The Rolling Stones song of the same name just happened to come on the radio. She has recovered completely from scour and is back walking and running and generally terrorising every animal species in the place. I tried to put her back in with the others but they bullied her. She refuses to eat solid food and has a melt down if she doesn't get her food in a bottle. I reckon she's about 2 weeks behind the others so for now I am humouring her. Needless to say this is one little piggy who won't be going to market!

After feeding time they love to climb all over us

Oly loves to sit with me when I'm feeding them

The first born and biggest male

The one who lost her tail 

Honky Tonk makes herself cosy in the dog's bed

Long ago sows were put in farrowing crates in the belief that they lay on their piglets and squashed them to death. I'm sure this happened and also that plenty of sows rejected their piglets, but I hate the idea of pinning any animal into a crate. However, next time I intend to put her into the stable a couple of weeks before her litter is due. And if she rejects them, I will use a crate for a couple of weeks just to get them started. It's no joke trying to feed 12 piglets and cow's milk is for calves not piglets.



*Frankeen is the diminutive of Frank from Irish.