Eastern Shore Sanctuary Blog

Vermont is the largest dairy producing state in New England, and fifteenth in the nation. This makes it a perfect location for the Eastern Shore Sanctuary and Education Center’s newest venture. Thanks to the generosity of an anonymous donor, our doors will soon open to cows rescued from the dairy industry.

For over ten years, the Eastern Shore Sanctuary and Education Center has provided a safe home to thousands of chickens and ducks who have endured a variety of abusive situations, from factory farms to cockfighting rings. In fact, we pioneered the use of special techniques that teach cockfighting roosters to stop fighting, and we have dozens of ex-fighters living peacefully in our flocks.

The caretaking of cows will in no way interfere with our current mission. We will still offer sanctuary to chickens, and in fact this expansion will allow us to help even more chickens than before. We are broadening our scope to help more animals in need.

Not only will we offer cows a good life, free from the terrifying manipulations of humanity, but we will also formulate innovative approaches to ending this brutal industry once and for all.

Make no mistake. Every gallon of milk means another baby stolen from his or her mother; every male baby stolen from his mother means another living creature doomed to suffer a short, painful life in a cruel veal crate. This is the bottom-line message about the dairy industry that our cows will carry forth.

In the meantime, a precious calf is already awaiting her move to our expanded sanctuary!

Rosalia was born blind. Even though she is healthy and full of life, to a dairy farmer, this beautiful living creature has no economic value, and so she was taken from her mother to be “culled.” Luckily, rescuers came to her aid and the farmer agreed to keep her until she was old enough to travel. We are thrilled that she will have the chance to live her life in a safe, healthy environment.

We have been working toward our goal of expansion since we moved to Vermont a year ago, and hope to be able to complete the process with no delays.

To that end, we need to raise $100,000 to complete the task of preparing a safe home for Rosalia and others like her. We need sand for bedding, feeding and watering equipment, free-standing partitions for cows who need quiet time, and all of the other accoutrements necessary to care for cows in need.

“This is a natural progression in our work,” said Miriam Jones, co-president of the Eastern Shore Sanctuary and Education Center, “and definitely in keeping with our broader social perspective on how farm animals are exploited. Roosters and bulls are seen as violent men, while hens and dairy cows are burdened with the idea that females are only useful for their reproductive organs. Both species, of course, deserve to live free from the consequences of such human perceptions. We welcome not only the cows, but also the chance to challenge these beliefs.”

Help us help the refugees from the dairy industry. Donate now to the Eastern Shore Sanctuary and Education Center; every single penny goes directly to help the animals.

Some of our long-term supporters have wondered what sanctuary cofounder pattrice jones is up to now that she’s not living at the sanctuary. While no longer living on-site, pattrice continues to be intimately involved with our operations. She has used the respite from the daily demands of sanctuary life to author scholarly articles rooted in her observations of and work with the birds at the sanctuary. One of these, which appears in the current issue of Spring: A Journal of Archetype and Culture, draws upon stories from the sanctuary to illustrate parallels between human and avian psychology. Another, which will appear in the forthcoming August issue of Feminism and Psychology, draws upon our fighting rooster rehabilitation program to illustrate connections between speciesism, sexism, and racism and to argue for an ecofeminist psychology encompassing the concerns of animals.

At present, pattrice is working on a book-length work of creative non-fiction that situates the foundation of the sanctuary (and the stories of its first feathered and furry inhabitants) within the context of a locality perverted by the poultry industry and the legacies of slavery, mapping that locality within a global economy in which people, animals, and ecosystems all are menaced by the same mindset. This work, which weaves stories from the sanctuary through thought-provoking illustrations of the intersection of oppressions, is being written for a general audience (especially all of those birdwatchers who don’t think of chickens as birds and all of those liberals who don’t see how speciesism is connected to problems like racism and poverty) rather than for people who are already vegan animal rights activists. She has been monomaniacally pounding it out this summer and hopes to be finished by late August.

pattrice at TLOV (Photo, Carol J. Adams)

After helping to relocate the sanctuary, pattrice moved to Minnesota, where she teaches at a community college in Minneapolis and a University in St. Paul, bicycling everywhere. Her psychology and women’s studies students have been not only accepting but often actively grateful for her inclusion of animals and their concerns in her curricula. Since moving to the Twin Cities, pattrice also has spoken at a green living event, a local lesbian bookstore, and the recent TLOV conference, at which she gave a talk on “queering animal liberation.” She’ll be at AR2010 in D.C. later this month. If you’re going, check out her presentations on nurturing activism, forging coalitions, commonality of oppressions, and new challenges for animal liberation as well as her workshop on dealing with grief and stress.

As you know, we have been providing sanctuary to chickens and ducks for over ten years. What you may NOT know, however, is that for the past two years, we have also been offering a home to doves and pigeons who have been rescued from various situations.

In fact, we are currently caring for almost 45 doves and pigeons.

However, the need is so much greater than our current space will allow. To that end, we have decided to build a permanent indoor/outdoor aviary which will be able to house 50 pigeons (with room for expansion as time goes on).

Geographically, we are positioned very well for this endeavor, being only four hours from Manhattan; it’s no cliche that New York provides a home (for better or for worse) to millions of pigeons. When the “worse” kicks in — when pigeons are injured or get sick — there are some kind souls (such as those on the Pigeon People Yahoo group) who take them in and help them heal. Many pigeons can be released after they get better; indeed, that’s ideal. However, some will never fly again, or will need care for the balance of their lives.

Those are the pigeons who need a place to live, a sanctuary. Apartments in NYC are by and large not the answer, as tenants usually live in constant fear that they will be forced to “get rid of the birds.”

We can be a place for these birds! We have the land, we have the people-power, and we have the resources to feed and otherwise care for many more pigeons than we are at present.

In fact, we have recently constructed two aviaries (one indoor and one outdoor) for about 35 doves who were rescued from Queens after a wedding release debacle. However, what we lack is a shelter for pigeons numbering more than the ten or so we house in our current set-up.

We envision an indoor/outdoor arrangement which can serve as an all-year living space for the pigeons. We have the space, and we have the drive; we simply need the funds to build the structure.

About $2,500 should be plenty. Of course, that won’t feed the birds once they are here, but we will take care of that part (although donations will always be welcome).

If you can help, please scroll up, look to the left, and click on the link below where it says “FEED THE BIRDS!” Every dollar will help.

Once we have enough funds, construction can begin immediately, and so within a matter of weeks thereafter, we can begin to offer a home to pigeons in need.

Thanks, truly, for your help.

This video showed up on one of the AR news lists and I think it’s phenomenal. Send it to everyone who believes that purchasing free-range animal products is ethical; if anything will make them see otherwise, this will.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMF5ZW2QvYg

In the wake of the BP oil spill comes some of the most shocking footage yet of what goes on inside Department of Agriculture-approved dairy farms, thanks to Mercy for Animals and the undercover footage they took at Conklin Farm in Ohio. I say “shocking” because most of us haven’t seen these things with our own eyes; yet what I’d like to explore here is the idea that these actions aren’t shocking at all in the context of a society founded upon (and steeped in) the Dangerous Duo of Pastoralism and Patriarchy.

Pastoralism is the 10,000-year-old ideology, still very much alive and well today, that has brainwashed most humans into believing that we have the right to own and exploit other animals for food, profit, and anything else we damn well feel like. As owned “objects,” animals are our property; and we are all raised to believe we can do whatever we want with our own property. Pretty logical.

In this context, what Gary Conklin did (and Billy Joe Gregg, and the other workers there) makes perfect sense. Their actions were simply a more extreme version of the kinds of things animal “farmers” do every minute of every day on every “farm” in the world. They went too far according to the “standards” of “right thinking” dairy farmers –that was their mistake. But that doesn’t make any of them a freak, or insane, or anything else other than the logical extension of pastoralism.

Interestingly, it was pastoralism that paved the path to patriarchy, since it worked so well as a model of oppression, and that’s where the title of this blog comes in.

In 1989, 14 female engineering students were murdered in pre-meditated fashion at École Polytechnique (15 were injured). The murderer felt justified in his actions because he believed that feminists had ruined his life by fighting for the rights of women to attend school there; his spot in the engineering program, you see, had been occupied by a woman.

At the time my main political focus was upon the ravaging effects of patriarchy. While the world denounced the actions of a crazy person, my friends and I were very clear that this man wasn’t anywhere near crazy; he was simply taking patriarchy to its logical conclusion. The mistake he made was the same one Gary Conklin et al made: he took it too far and he got caught. Patriarchy must punish the most extreme public expressions of its violent nature so as to obscure the less extreme expressions taking place everywhere, at every moment, all around us.

Pastoralism employs the same tactics. If we punish the most egregious forms of animal abuse, then we won’t notice the twelve trillion other examples of it going on every second of every day all over the world. ALL OVER THE WORLD, in every nook and cranny of this pastoralist, patriarchal world.

Predictably, we have lots of calls to punish Gary Conklin and crew (especially Billy Joe since so far he’s the star of the undercover footage) so we can all feel like we’ve done something. And we will punish them, because we as a pastoralist world must do so in order to maintain our status quo.

But let’s not worry too much about these guys. In the end, we can’t really do too much damage to them. What they did isn’t a felony because those cows belong to Conklin Dairy (and not to themselves).

The same legal system that will slap a fine (and a bit of time) on these humans is the same one that inspected and approved the place THREE TIMES before Mercy for Animals’ undercover footage revealed to the outside world what was going on in there. It’s the same legal system that was created by men steeped in the traditions of pastoralism and patriarchy: land-owners, animal-owners, women-owners, slave-owners. Any woman who’s been raped can tell you all about the limitations of the legal system. If cows could speak as we do, they would tell you the same story a thousand times stronger.

There is an extraordinary danger in accepting that this case is an isolated one, the actions of a group of freak sadist animal abusers. It’s the same danger that sees little girls as threatened by strangers with candy and not their own fathers.

AR activists — those of you who have the spotlight — please do not lose this opportunity to point out that Gary Conklin et al are no different than all the rest of them. Let’s show pastoralism in all its glory. Let’s also remember that this movement needs the actions of every single one of us — those who fight within the confines of the law and those who have the courage and ability to resist the laws that were designed specifically to protect property owners like Gary Conklin in the first place.

Awhile back, I posted a blog entry about the Last Remaining Cockfighter (as I had taken to calling him) — about how we took him to what we thought would be a good home, only to have him turned away heartlessly because the woman found another rooster to complement her landscaping (you can see I’m still quite upset and angry about the whole thing, even now).

On any case, about a month ago we received an email from a woman who used to work at FARM and who now lives in Vermont, only about 35 minutes from us! This in itself was excellent news, since AR folks are incredibly hard to find here in VT. But the news got better: she was interested in adopting a rooster for her hens and did we have one we wanted to adopt out?

Did we? Wow. Without getting too convoluted, time-wise, in this story, please check out her place:

http://www.turtlehillfarm.net

Turtle Hill Farm Animal Sanctuary takes in rescued guinea pigs and horses (which I find absolutely fabulous and a bit adorable), and they also have a few hens running about. It’s acres and acres of gorgeous, secluded VT land where everyone has as much freedom as possible while having access to shelter, food, medical care, and so forth.

So, not only is a wonderful woman (accompanied by a wonderful husband and child) offering to take in this guy, but this is another sanctuary, right here in Vermont!

To cut to the case, they came out to meet Rumi (as they later named him, which was another wonderful occurrence as I happen to love Rumi and have a calendar of Rumi sayings hanging here on my wall). He was in a special area as he was still getting into fights and was having a bout of arthritis (a few of the last cockfighters who came have had periodic arthritis). They liked him, and so we made plans to bring him out to their place.

A few weeks later, everyone’s schedules worked and we brought him to one of the most beautiful places we’ve seen yet. I don’t mean the house or the buildings, although they are quite nice. I mean the animals. Turtle Hill Farm has taken in some of the most abused and neglected horses and guinea pigs imaginable, and now they are all the picture of health. Truly wonderful to see, and of course thrilling to us that Rumi would be in about the best possible place he could imagine.

When we first let him out of the cage, it was one of the hens who put him in his place. It was quite interesting to watch; we were used to rooster-on-rooster fighting, and hen-on-hen fighting, but not hen-on-rooster fighting. He gave up VERY quickly, but she kept at it until she was sure he was not going to make trouble. No blood was drawn, but she was making it clear (at least this is my interpretation) that he WOULD behave if he wanted to stay.

And he has. He got a bit of a mite problem from the stress, and it took him a bit of time to leave the barn, but he’s doing very well now, from what I hear.

So, thank you to Turtle Hill Farm Animal Sanctuary on behalf of Rumi, for providing a truly happy ending to a story that began years ago on the end of a tether tied to an oil drum. May he have many happy years of freedom to come.

No duh, right? Well, yes, but you know, we humans are crafty when we want what we want and don’t want to change what we want. That’s why slippery slopes are best avoided even by the most scrupulous among us.

What on earth am I talking about? Last Saturday, we “bought” 40 hens from a CSA about 50 miles away from us. [I use quotation marks around the word bought because that is literally what we did: we paid $100 for 40 hens. Several large-scale rescues have fallen through over the past few months -- no one's fault, and we certainly appreciate the folks who were trying to make them happen -- but as we had more roosters than hens, we had to do something. Aram found an ad on Craigslist placed by folks who were getting rid of their hens, we contacted the people, and that's why we were purchasing living breathing creatures.]

In any case, the CSA was run by seemingly progressive folks, a straight family with two adults and three children. The long-haired guy was running his tractor with their new infant on his lap, and his very young daughters led us to him with a presence of mind that is usually lacking in very young people. The sun was shining, there was a note on the cooler about purchasing items according to the honor system, and he shook our hands with a pleasant, mild-mannered smile.

Everything was lovely until we reached the portable coop. First, it was far too small to house so many hens (they had far more than 40). Second, the fence that was set up around the coop on any given day was far too short to give anywhere near enough space for even 40 hens (let alone more).

Inside the coop was about half a foot of old chicken crap. Clearly no one had cleaned that thing out in who knows how long. Not a scrap of straw or shavings could be seen.

Hanging from the roof of the coop was a metal feed container holding crumbs of some sort — possibly layer mash — no seeds, no whole grains of any kind. And water.

When the man started to hand over the hens to me, though, that’s when I noticed the two worst things: the fact that he held them by their legs (which he stopped as soon as he saw us holding them upright) and the fact that their beaks had been burned off (making us wonder just how many they had once had in this tiny space).

Pretty bad conditions; but what struck us the hardest is that such conditions are by far NOT the worst to which humans subject chickens. BY FAR. I will also venture to guess that these chickens started out in very different (and far better) conditions than we found them in.

Which brings us back to the point of this post. By giving credence to the idea that non-human animals are ours to use, we take a step onto an inevitably slippery slope. There is no possible way to gain a real foothold on this slope because we ourselves have created it so that we ourselves can step out onto it. Because you see, gaining a foothold — stopping the downward slide — requires adhering to lines which we cannot draw once that initial acceptance is made. In other words: once we accept that exploitation is possible, there’s nothing to stop us.

Sure it’s all right to forget about that morning feed because you’re too tired to get out of bed; sure it’s OK to forget about cleaning that coop because you’ve been fighting with your significant other all day; sure it’s all right to do whatever the hell you want because these are NOT living creatures entitled to their own choices about their own lives, but instead living creatures whom you have decided need to conform to YOUR choices and YOUR ideas.

So, when your intentions are good, your actions will be in accordance and you will provide good care; when they are not, you will not; and either way, in the end, it won’t matter to you because in the beginning, you decided these animals were yours to do with as you wish. Perhaps a twinge of guilt here, a passing regret there — this is all you will have to handle if you treat them poorly.

That’s why no exploitation is good exploitation. Just like dictatorships are all oppressive whether or not they are benevolent. Some paradigms cannot ever be trusted.

Check out this link ASAP.

http://animals.change.org/petitions/view/horse_flesh_for_dinnerrare_medium_well-done

Missouri is on the verge of approving a horse slaughter facility — the first one in the US since the last one was shut down in 2007. It’s not the fact of where, of course, but it IS true that in such cases, letters from constituents CAN make a difference!

So, again, click on that link and read what’s there. Everything you need to send letters to the relevant senators (and governor) in Missouri is there. It will take 10 minutes of your time and can make an actual difference.

EVERY slaughterhouse that’s shut (or better yet, unopened) is a clear victory for the animals.

Miriam

The Eastern Shore Sanctuary and Education Center, in existence for over 10 years and recently relocated to Springfield, Vermont, is seeking a full-time vegan animal caregiver with experience working with farm animals (ideally, chickens and cows, although we can provide training to fill in any gaps). Other abilities, such as mechanical ability and solid problem-solving skills, are ideal, but not required.

Candidates should have a broad commitment to the ethics of abolitionism, including the rejection of any and all possible “friendly” alternatives to factory farming.

This will be a live-in position, with a custom-built wood home on the property for him or her to occupy free of charge. We will also provide a competitive salary.

This position starts September 1, 2010.

If you are interested, or know someone who might be interested, please email Miriam at sanctuary@bravebirds.org.

Thanks,

Eastern Shore Sanctuary and Education Center

We got this call about a week ago from this woman who wanted to adopt a rooster. Shocking, since NO ONE wants roosters. She wanted to come right out and get him — she has 18 hens and no rooster, she told me — but I told her we need to bring him to her instead so we could check out the place, and we made a plan to bring him out later in the week.

Of course we had the whole conversation about how she couldn’t ever kill him, which she swore she never would. We also talked about how this guy was the last remaining cock fighter to still be caged much of the time because he still hasn’t learned not to fight, and how great his life would be now that he could have his own world with only hens and no one else to hurt him. Oh, she agreed, that would be lovely.

All week we told him how great it would be, he would never be in a cage again.

On Saturday, we put him in a crate and got out there (driving for about 30 minutes on dirt roads through a gorgeous in the middle of nowhere area) and see this beautiful spread with hens walking all over the place, totally free. We think yay, this is perfect, and we walk to the door and a woman came out with a look on her face. So, I said, are we too early? And she said no, hold on, just let me get a sweater. But then she doesn’t move, and gets yet another look on her face and I know right then. It was that very particular compassionate look, the one that people seem to think makes everything all right (which of course it does in her world) and says, oh, I’m so sorry, I tried to call you this morning but I had the wrong number (unlike the other two times she called the right number when she wanted a rooster). The bottom line? Someone else “gave her” a rooster.

She swept in to hug me and all I could do was put out my arms and say no, but there she was STILL HUGGING ME while I was PUSHING HER AWAY. She moved in on Aram but his look must have scared her more than mine so she backed off.

Neither of us could say anything, literally, we were so angry and upset — she was blathering on about how sorry she was to take our time (like that was the issue) and even went so far as to offer us a cup of coffee, like we’d ever consider sitting down with her. I was finally able to say no — it was the only word I could get out of my mouth — and we both turned and walked away. It was that or scream and wail like a crazy person.

We picked up the poor guy (we had set him down in his crate so he could see some of the hens walking around) and left. He’s back in a cage much of the day and we are back to rehabbing him as we were before. At least it’s spring and he will be fine, especially once we have some more hens, but of course that’s not the point. It’s never the point. They don’t care. I’m sure this new rooster goes very well with her landscaping and they are all the same to her anyway, and I’m also sure that within a couple of hours her miniscule guilt turned to anger and disgust at the rude horrible animal people.

Whenever people wonder why oh why animal rights people feel the way we do, I wonder why oh why they wonder this.