“In November, the smell of food is different. It is an orange smell. A squash and pumpkin smell. It tastes like cinnamon and can fill up a house in the morning, can pull everyone from bed in a fog. Food is better in November than any other time of the year.”                                                                                                                                                                                               – Cynthia Rylant

Stevie is settling in well, she’s very much at home in the barn – the heart of the main MLHR farm! She is a calm and affectionate girl who is partial to bum scratches and rummaging in your pockets for treats. She is inquisitive and can safely interact with animals on the other side of the fence and gate. 

Stevie happens to be blind and as she is more reliant on the information she receives from her other senses, we have supports in place to help her orient herself. Her environment is kept consistent, wind-chimes hang on the fence above her water bucket and her supplementary food is provided in the same place at the same time every day.

Before we enter the barn we call to her and we speak to her as we move around so that she knows where we are at all times. She is familiar now with the perimeter of the enclosure and she has ample safe space to get on with the important foal business of playing, rolling, stretching out for well-earned snoozes and generally being adored!

They created a play area for the dogs, they built, painted, mended and bolstered fencing in anticipation of the winter weather ahead and we cannot thank them enough for their support. We’ve had visits from the Vet, Farrier and Equine Dentist to all of our bases to keep the animals in tip-top shape. 

At MLHR Cork this month, the team rescued beautiful Rose and her 8-week old babies Elsa and Arlo. Rose and her babies are so affectionate and playful given their harrowing experience. At just 4 years of age, Rose was forced to have litter after litter of puppies and this has caused her vision to deteriorate. Our Vets believe she can see light and possibly shadows. We are delighted that Rose has now secured a fantastic foster home and Elsa and Arlo have found the loving forever homes that they deserve. 

MLPR founder Cathy approached a home at the end of the trail to enquire about the piglets and by sheer coincidence it turned out that the homeowner had just helped Department of Agriculture get the piglets into the safety of a cattle shed. While relieved that the babies were safe from the elements, Cathy worried it might prove difficult to find somewhere suitable to home the babies. Veterinary Inspectors contacted Cathy in the hope that there would be space for the piglets at MLPR. We are so grateful that they agreed to cover the cost of neutering (approximately €90 per piglet) and to transport the piglets to the Rescue. It was a hugely positive example of organisations working together. Sadly, situations like this will continue to arise if people do not take responsible action of neutering pigs before they can breed. 

And now to November … our Story of the Month focuses on our relationship with animals, each other and the world around us. In our Arrivals Lounge we welcome Rose nd her darling babies Arlo and Elsa while over in our Departures Lounge we say a very happy farewell to Georgia as she heads off to her forever home. We have an indepth feature on My Lovely Pig Rescue plus news from My Lovely Dog Rescue and the latest bargains from My Lovely Charity Shop and My Lovely Tack Shack. Don’t miss our Behind the Scenes section if your spirits need a little lift on these dark mornings.

As always, we are here for the animals because you are here for us. We hope you enjoy this issue. Thank you for subscribing!

Story of the Month – Hear their cry

Tackling the whole area of animal welfare is a hard one and as our interactions with animals, both wild and domestic change and our usage of them becomes more complicated and interdependent there is even a struggle in the scientific world to come up with one clear definition of what animal welfare really means.

Is it just about the physical health and well-being of the animal? Is it about their mental health? Is welfare about their ability to express normal behaviours and how do we define these behaviours for each species? Is it a combination of all of these? How do we assess pain in animals? How do we assess their emotions in a way that is relevant to them and that we as humans can understand and interpret in a way we can use for how we treat, house and look after them? 

Are animal experiments ever justified? Are there some species who we should never experiment on and what sets them apart from those we think it’s okay to let live out their whole lives inside laboratories being constantly examined, observed and tested on?

Why does any of this matter at all anyway? Why does animal welfare really matter? Why does it matter how we treat animals? Are they not there for us to use, to eat, to clothe ourselves with, to test drugs and products on?

At a time when so much is happening in the world we need to truly see that everything is connected. How we view each other as humans, how we view animals, how we view our relationship with nature, each one of these informs the other. Each one of these relationships feeds into our overall existence and well-being and as long as we continue believing that anyone else, whether human or nonhuman, is there for our needs and that their needs are secondary to ours then we will never be at peace as a species ourselves.

So many threats are facing us and the animals of our world right now and how we treat the humans in need and the animals in need will define us as a species going forward.

Zoonotic diseases are spreading and becoming much more common, threatening our very existence and in the last twenty years have led to such an amount of human suffering and death but also such suffering and death amongst our animal friends with millions culled, often in barbaric and agonising ways. (Did you know that hundreds of thousands of pigs were both buried and burnt alive only 4 years ago in China to try and control an outbreak of African swine fever? And the Irish government now wants to export our beautiful Irish pigs to this very country to help them restock after they buried all of theirs alive?). We can look to the country who did this and blame them for such barbaric behaviour and then pride ourselves on ‘being so much better’. Or we can acknowledge the role that we all play everyday in the choices we make in our lives. Our food system is international now and we can no longer believe that we and our choices are separate from the immense suffering that happens every single hour of every single day to domestic animals all over the world.

As the UK and other countries, most recently New Zealand, move to ban live export the Irish government is actually ramping up ours. Last year 141,494 calves alone were exported from our shores. Let’s call them what they really are shall we, babies, cos many of them are only a few weeks old. If any of you have ever been close to a calf, touched their soft little muzzles, scratched their big velvety ears or looked into their beautiful eyes with their ever so long eyelashes, then you would know that they are gentleness personified. So why are we taking them away from their mothers who can be heard bellowing for them for days on end each year on dairy farms up and down the country, then cramming them into lorries and then onto huge ships without access to food or water, scared and completely not understanding what’s going on at all. Just imagine for a moment that fear they are feeling and that journey they must make on rough seas and then imagine what awaits them on the other side.

In the Spring of 1911, an extraordinary woman saw a sight in the ports of Antwerp, Belgium which was to change everything. Ada Cole, an English nurse, a vegetarian and a staunch advocate for animals all her life found her true calling at the age of 51. This author cannot describe what Ada saw any better than to quote from Joyce Rushen’s book ‘’She heard their cry, the life of Ada Cole,’’ 

For there, upon the quayside, stood line upon line of worn-out English horses,  feeble, lame and pitifully old, some of them partially or wholly blind as, roped three abreast they staggered to a dreadful end in the local abattoirs over four miles ahead. Behind them, creaked a string of conveyances, waiting to pick up those too infirm, or too injured, to continue walking. Those that had not survived the brutal conditions of their voyage lay crumpled in horrifying stillness on the ground.

The sheer compassion, the willingness to look and truly see, the strength and determination of Ada Cole that day led to the founding of World Horse Welfare, an international organisation which works with equines and their owners all over the world to better their lives. I wonder what Ada would make of our world today?

Here we are over a century later and the sight of helpless animals being transported like those horses is still going on. Have we learnt nothing? Where is our humanity? Where are our eyes that can truly see what we are doing?

The world is changing and we must change too. We must evolve further as a species if we are to have any hope at all. What is the point of declaring animals as sentient beings when we continue to treat them as property and do whatever we want to them, justified by our so-called needs? 

We’ve been using the creatures and the resources of this planet for ever so long that we can’t see any other way but there is always another way. 

We just have to go and find it. 

So today let’s all think about how we could live our lives without hurting anyone, without hurting the smallest of creatures who are, after all, just doing exactly what we’re doing, just trying to survive. 

And in a very strange way this made me quite happy, to think that the little guy I saw, so small and achingly fragile, might just make it through to Spring. How different is he from me really? We both breathe (slightly differently to be sure, me by getting oxygen through my lungs and he through a system of fine branching tubes called a tracheal system bringing oxygen directly to each cell of his body). We both need food. We both need shelter to survive in hopes of another day. Does he have hopes like I do? Does that even matter? We’re both here for whatever time has been allotted to us, neither of us particularly in control of that and we will stumble through and make mistakes and live on for a brighter day tomorrow.

So let’s be kind to ourselves and others, human and nonhuman, no matter what shape or form they might be. In the end we’re all in this together and together we might just survive it.

And let’s choose to be on the right side of history because time will surely show us that we have been so horrifically wrong in our attitudes to animals.  

Arrivals – Rose and her beautiful babies, Arlo and Elsa

Now finally there is hope for Rose. She and her last two precious babies, Arlo and Elsa, are safe and loved. She is being fostered in a home which loves and respects her and where every effort will be made to make sure she knows she and her babies are safe. The constant stress which she would have felt up til now is slowly ebbing away and a whole new life is opening up before her. Once her puppies are old enough they will go to their forever homes – two have already been lined up for these wonderful, playful little dotes. Rose herself is still young, only four years old so she has many years of happiness now to look forward to. Already you can see that she has a wonderful nature and is very kind and loving. Soon the darkness too may be behind her as we will see if there is any treatment for her condition. In the meantime she is happy in herself and enjoying precious safe moments with Arlo and Elsa. 

Departures – Georgia

All of our rescues are very precious to us. Many have come from very difficult situations and so we try our best to make sure that when they leave us again it’s to a pretty wonderful home. But all the homechecks in the world are often just not enough. Horses are worth money and we find that there are those out there who will sell on our rescues and not abide by the contract they have signed with us which strictly forbids this and forbids any breeding. So it was with Georgia, sold on again and again and it always amazes us just how many owners some of our horses pass through in quite a short space of time.  

Exactly one week later, the piglets were born. Given the time since her arrival at MLPR this meant that Lilly was likely impregnated 1-2 days before she was rescued. Cathy says Lilly was likely impregnated on her first heat by one of her brothers. The primary concern was that as Lilly is so young, her pelvis so small and her babies inbred, complications could arise that would put Lilly’s life and the lives of her babies in danger. In the weeks leading up to Lilly farrowing, Cathy spent time with her every day, gently handling Lilly’s face, belly and her bum to get her used to this kind of touch so that she would not be unduly stressed if intervention was necessary during birth. 

Lilly is such an affectionate girl and contined to be, right up to and after giving birth. Cathy explains that leading up to giving birth, Mamas don’t want to be around other pigs – they don’t want pigs on the other side of the wall from them, they don’t want other pigs walking around outside their nesting area. They don’t want anything in their environment to be changed as they will have spent time preparing the area to be just as they want it for having their babies. Problems arise as Cathy says “if they can’t prepare, if they can’t nest and remove themselves from the dangers of the herd, the other boars or females”. Cathy notes that you can see “the beautiful unit that is created from having that privacy and you don’t have stressed mamas and sick babies”.  

Lilly nurses every half an hour or so and she will likely have her babies with her for the next 2 months. She has a great appetite and eats a balanced and varied diet to build her back up after pregnancy, birth and nursing. As Cathy explains, “we make up our own pig feed which is beet pulp, barley, seaweed, pig minerals and vitamins, linseed oil for the omegas, and then they get grass and have their noses in dirt. We watch Lilly’s top line and she gets an extra handful of pig pellets which are high in protein, which the other pigs wouldn’t get.” 

The straw in the bedding area is kept flat because the piglets are still small and tend to bury themselves in bedding. Watching Lilly on the cameras it was clear that she would come into the sleeping area, and oink first to locate each baby. She would then sidle in beside them and they would snuggle in together. In the early days after the piglets were born, Cathy recalls that Lilly would come out for her food, then seem conflicted. She’d run back in to her babies, call to them, cock her head and listen for them. After locating each of them, she would spend some time fussing over them and then she’d come back out to eat. Cathy says “to call them, listen, find them, check them and then come back to food – they are all the same instincts that we have. Mothers’ instincts are denied so ritualistically and so systematically and I don’t know how it’s happened.” 

Lilly is one of the lucky Mamas. She was just beginning to experience freedom and a happy and fulfilled life on her own terms when her babies were born but in just a few months, once her babies have been weaned, Lilly will be able to continue her resume her adventures. For Lilly and her babies the future is bright.    

Our farmies work from morning until night to keep the farms running and all the animals cared for. Between cleaning, feeding preparation, medical treatments and call outs, they capture so many moments on camera, some are funny, some are tender and some just show how content the animals in our care are, living the peaceful lives they always deserved. Here are some ‘behind the scenes’ videos and photos from the farms this month.

How to make contact with Authorised Officers

• An Garda Síochána – A list of Garda stations is available online at https://www.garda.ie/en/contact-us/station-directory/

• Local Authorities (for incidents on Public land) https://www.gov.ie/en/help/departments/#local-authorities  

• ISPCA for emergencies call 1890 515515 (Monday to Friday 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.). Welfare concerns can http://www.ispca.ie/cruelty_complaint 

• Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine – for incidents on private land phone 01 607 2379 or 0761 064 408 or email [email protected]