More work pictures

[urbpan]

It so happens that the wildlife sanctuary where I work includes a traditional New England working farm. (Well, it's really a demonstration farm: we make money with it, but it's supported by the Sanctuary Society. Its purpose is to show how a small scale farm can operate without a negative impact on the environment.)



This was the first day that Emma, the new calf, arrived at the farm purchased from a farm in New Hampshire. These education staff members are trying to comfort her and get her used to the new place.









Our visitors, especially children, get to learn that what becomes tasty starts off as very very cute!

Comments

[zipotle.livejournal.com]

Is the calf one of the dwarf breeds? Her legs look really short.

Poor piggies. I love pork but it makes me so guilty. How can I eat a pink dog?
I love the way their ears are scalloped. That's for ID, right? Do they get any kind of pain meds when they do that? I wondered about it when we were at the state fair.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Yes, the calf is one of the tiny breeds, I forget which (the names of domestic breeds simply don't stick to my brain). She is expected to be 500 to 700 pounds when fully grown.

Yes, the scalloped ears are for ID, done at the farm they were born at, not mine. I don't know if they get pain meds when the chunks are cut out of their ears, but I doubt it. It seems to me that most animals raised for food aren't ever anethetized for anything, but I could be wrong.

At a large farm, the animals are just the raw material for your products. But at a small one, the animals' suffering is seen as unpleasant but part of life on the farm. Little rubber donuts around sheep tails and testicles, electro-cauterized horns, pig tusks clipped off, and so on. At least it's all done mindfully, by people who feel for the animals, and enjoy working with them.

[rinalia.livejournal.com]

Ear notching on pigs is done for id purposes (they identify number in the litter & date of birth). No anesthesia or pain medication is used when they are ear notched, castrated or when their needle teeth are clipped.

Personally, I like the big, happy, big, complete pink ears I see at the sanctuary where I work. :)

[rinalia.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, and no anesthesia when their tails are chopped off.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, the pig ears that you can buy as dog treats are intact. Maybe the notch method is for small farms only?

[rinalia.livejournal.com]

They often notch on big farms. I have seen notches in pig ears for dog treats. It is possible some pigs are not notched, but are tagged or tattooed. Still, notching is the most common method of litter identification.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

squeeeee! cute babies!!

[openheartsoftly.livejournal.com]

Well ok, they are cute, still I get hungry.

Have the best

[turil.livejournal.com]

I'm on a quest to try and let my preschool students know about factory farming and how those cute cows, pigs, baby chicks, and such are treated really, really badly at most farms. I don't want to piss off any parents (I work at a parent coop, so the parents are regularly in the classroom), so I've got to find a friendly, but clear way of getting the message out. Luckily there is a girl in my class who is lactose intollerant, and she doesn't eat any dairy, so we do get to talk about cow milk vs. soy and rice milk. And I know at least one boy is an ovo-lacto vegetarian (he harassed one of the teachers when she brought in a lobster to kill and eat in class!).

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

she brought in a lobster to kill and eat in class!

That's pretty amazing, that she thought that was okay. Lobsters are a really funny special case. They don't need to be slaughtered or butchered--cooking them and killing them takes place concurrently--so no messy beheadings, guttings or bleedings. And yet for some reason they don't violate the North American insect-eating taboo.

There probably would be more that one protestor if she brought a chicken in for the same purpose, huh?

[turil.livejournal.com]

The teacher who did this came from a family with a long line of fisherman. I'm sure she thought nothing of it. Though it is odd that the school is technically only serves vegetarian food to the kids.

Hmmm, we have snails as a "class pet". I wonder what the kids and teachers would think if I suggested we eat them! (Wild edibles!)

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

Um. Please don't bring that up with the children - especially preschool age. Definitely strongly encourage them to think about the associations between the food they eat and the animals that provide it, but don't get into the dogma of it. Also, talk about animals as you know they are, feeling and emotional beings.

These are preschool kids. It's extremely extremely extremely very much difficult to get them to eat in the first place. I can tell you first hand that any interference with this will be not at all appreciated.

Preschool kids are historically not very good at making judgements based on anything besides their guts. Don't take advantage of that for your own agenda. If you teach the kids that animals are feeling creatures then, when it's the appropriate time, the kids will be able to make a choice on their own.

It's the parents choice to introduce whatever dogma they choose into their childs life. Not your job. At all.

[turil.livejournal.com]

I certainly don't want to have parents getting upset, which is why I said that I need to do it in a way that doesn't upset them. I'm certainly not the dogma type. But I do feel obliged to make sure the kids don't have the wool pulled over their eyes. And I really want them to know that it's ok to be a vegetarian. I only wish I'd had someone who had told me that it is ok to be a vegetarian when I was a kid. I was forced to eat dead animals all the time because my parents thought it was the right thing to do. I don't fault them, since they grew up with all the propaganda of the 50s, and simply didn't know any better. But their ignorance did make my life (and lots of cute animals' lives, too) miserable for a decade or so (when they finally introduced me to a good friend of theirs who was a vegetarian - it was like a miracle for me to find out that I was not alone, and that being a vegetarian was perfectly respectable and healthy!).

Fortunately, I teach in Cambridge, where vegetarianism is practically the law! The school itself has an ovo-lacto vegetarian menu. And all the kids I work with are very hearty eaters who love fresh veggies and fruits and rice and pasta. So there will be no kids starving to death.

What's funny is that today I found a book on the shelves in the school that was called Cows That Type. It's about some cows who find a typewriter and start sending letters to the farmer (who owns them) demanding to be treated better or they won't produce any more milk. The farmer finally acquiecses when the chickens go on strike, too. What's even funnier is that nearly all the kids said that they had this book at home already.

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

It sounds like your work has already been done for you. :)

That book is hilarious!