For the story so far, click here 🙂
Join Megan as she begins her investigation inside the organisation – Friday. Don’t be late 😉
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vegan, vegetarian, veggie kids, vegan children, vegan children’s stories, vegan comics, animals, animal rights, cows, animal sanctuary
For the story so far, click here 🙂
Find out if Megan has had better luck on Wednesday 🙂
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vegan, vegetarian, veggie kids, vegan children, vegan children’s stories, vegan comics, animals, animal rights, cows, animal sanctuary
For the story so far, click here 🙂
Story continues Monday 🙂
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vegan, vegetarian, veggie kids, vegan children, vegan children’s stories, vegan comics, animals, animal rights, cows, animal sanctuary
Story continues from Monday:
Story continues Friday 🙂
***********
If you find this difficult to read, just enlarge it with your browser’s zoom 🙂
Click here for episodes 1 to 5 of Megan & Flos, or find them on the Stories for ages 8 and up page 🙂
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vegan, vegetarian, veggie kids, vegan children, vegan children’s stories, vegan comics, animals, animal rights, cows, animal sanctuary
My flesh to you is unnecessary,
And my milk’s unnecessary for you,
So if none of these is necessary
Then my suffering’s unnecessary too.
******************
Raystede Centre for Animal Welfare‘s governing document states:
1.1 The objects of the charity are
(1) To prevent and relieve cruelty to animals and to protect them from UNNECESSARY SUFFERING and to promote and encourage a knowledge and love of animals and of their proper care and treatment.
and yet they serve meat, fish, dairy and eggs in their cafe.
Tell them they’re breaking their own laws!
Raystede Centre for Animal Welfare,
The Broyle, Ringmer,
East Sussex,
BN8 5AJ
Tel: (01825) 840252
info@raystede.org
And don’t forget to sign and share the petition 😀
Thank you 🙂
For the stories so far click here 🙂
Chapter 11 continued from yesterday:
Luke stood still, his face flushed hot.
“They know!” he thought with horror.
It got worse. He watched as two police officers walked up to the organisers’ table. After a few moments a man there pointed in Luke’s direction. The police officers started to walk towards him. He ran. All he could think was that he needed to get out of there. They might know his name but would they know his address? He didn’t look behind, that would be suspicious, he just ran as fast as he could. The wheelbarrow was slowing him down. He had to leave it.
He climbed the low post and rail fence and jumped down into the car park. His first instinct was to find Grandad’s car, but then he thought that if they knew his name, they might know who his grandparents were, they might be waiting for him there. He hesitated, crouched between a Mini and a Fiesta, and tried to see Grandad’s car without being seen. Yes, that was it, and there was Grandad. With another policeman.
There was nothing for it, he had to go back into the market, he had to try to be invisible in the crowd. But he was scared and wanted an ally. He made a beeline for the black-haired lady’s stall.
The lady, who was just beginning to pack up her stall, putting leaflets back in their boxes, was surprised to see Luke racing towards her, all red in the face and out of breath, looking like he feared for his life.
“Hide me!” said Luke desperately, and sunk to the floor behind the biggest box.
The lady was alarmed.
“What’s wrong? What are you …?”
“Shhh!” said Luke in a vehement whisper, “don’t talk to me! Don’t look at me! They might be watching!”
“But …”
“Excuse me Miss,” another woman’s voice interrupted her. She turned to face a policewoman.
“Is this your stall?” she asked.
“Yes it is.”
“And your name is?”
“Jessica Rabbit. Would you like a leaflet?”
“I would like to have a look, yes, thank you,” and the policewoman began to paw the various piles. “Is this all you’ve got?”
The black-haired lady casually dropped her jacket on top of Luke as another officer stepped around the stall to look in the boxes.
“I’ve got these as well,” she answered, “as you can see,” and she lifted the boxes onto the table so that they wouldn’t need to rummage around the other side.
The policewoman found what she was looking for – three different anti-dairy leaflets.
“Is there any reason you were hiding these?” she asked.
The lady laughed.
“I wasn’t hiding them, I was just in the process of packing up,” she explained.
The police officers exchanged cynical glances and while the male picked up the box of leaflets, the female addressed the stall-holder.
“I am arresting you on suspicion of offences under section 1 of the Criminal Damage Act 1971. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand?”
“Not remotely,” the lady replied, “what am I supposed to have done?”
Luke stayed motionless under the lady’s jacket. He felt bad that she was getting blamed for what he’d done, but was somehow unable to move or speak. He just sat still until he couldn’t hear them any more. He waited till they’d gone.
When he stood up and watched them retreat past the other stalls, seemingly diminished in size, his courage returned. He donned the khaki jacket, pulled the hood over his head and cautiously followed. The officers and their captive approached a police car and the policewoman opened a rear door, put her hand on the black-haired lady’s head and assisted her into the back seat.
Luke was worried they would drive away before he could get to them but luck was on his side again. Another policeman with a camera called to his colleagues and they walked a few steps away from the car to talk to him. That was Luke’s chance.
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Story concludes tomorrow, or read the whole of chapter 11 now 🙂
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vegan, vegetarian, vegan children’s story, vegan children’s book, books, children’s books, juvenile fiction, veggie kids, vegan children, animals, cows, animal farming, animal rights
For the stories so far click here 🙂
Chapter 11 continued from Friday:
With a wheelbarrow full of three different leaflets which told the truth about the dairy industry, Luke headed for the car park. The wheelbarrow was heavy and the cars were parked quite close together on uneven ground, so it was rather difficult to stop the barrow from tipping. But Luke was strong and determined so he only lost control of it a couple of times, and on those occasions the cars he grazed were already scratched anyway. He put one leaflet under a wiper blade, on the windscreen of each car. He’d seen it done before with car-wash flyers in the supermarket car park.
Some wipers were easy to lift, some of them required a bit of force, a couple of them came off, but when that happened he was luckily able to find a window or a sunroof open so he tossed the leaflet inside. Considerate as always, he tossed the wiper blade in with it.
After some time – he had no idea how much – Luke had leafleted most of the cars in the car park. He had intended not to miss a single one but when he saw an angry man, waving a wiper blade, fast approaching his position, he decided that discretion was the better part of valour and retreated behind the long queues for the portaloos. He had almost half a box of leaflets left and wanted to use them. It wasn’t long before he found an opportunity.
The ice cream van was parked close to the line of trees which skirted the market. It was doing a roaring trade. Luke felt that it wouldn’t do any trade at all if there was any justice in the world. He was sure it wouldn’t if everyone knew the truth. That thought gave him an idea. This idea, he was well aware, was not, strictly speaking, legal. But it was moral and that meant he was right to do it. He would do what Robin Hood would have done, whatever the consequences. He was an outlaw after all.
He left his wheelbarrow in the shadows behind the trees and ran back to a craft stall he’d seen earlier. The lady on the craft stall was demonstrating how to make paper maché models. She was doing the ‘here’s one I made earlier’ bit, revealing a stiff, hollow, paper pig ready for a coat of paint. The tub of wallpaper paste that she’d been using in an earlier part of her demonstration was tucked away under her stall.
“I jus’ need to borra a bit,” Luke told himself, “I’ll bring it back before she misses it.”
Within minutes he was pasting leaflets all over one side of the ice cream van, unseen by the ice cream seller or his treat-seeking customers who stood in line on the other side. He worked fast, knowing he might be spotted and stopped at any moment. At the same time he was encouraged by a feeling that some great spirit was watching over him, enabling him to complete his mission unhindered. The spirit of Robin Hood? It couldn’t just have been luck that he’d been able to get his hands on exactly what he needed for this job. The label on the side of the tub of paste read:
MELROSE WHEATPASTE
suitable for paper maché, scrapbooking
wallpaper application & billboard posters
NON TOXIC * STRONG * DRIES TRANSPARENT
WARNING: WHEATPASTE POSTERS, ONCE APPLIED, ARE DIFFICULT TO REMOVE.
It couldn’t have been more perfect. Luke fearlessly pasted over colourful illustrations of lollipops, ice cream cones, and a happy cartoon cow who bore no resemblance to her real-life counterparts. The van’s lies were soon obliterated by pages of facts and figures about the cruel reality of dairy farming, including miserable photographic proof. When the side of the van was completely covered in leaflets, as high as Luke could reach, he stepped back to see the full effect. It was good.
Unable to believe how well this was going, Luke slipped unseen, back the way he’d come. He re-emerged from behind the line of trees when he reached the craft stall and returned the paste. Then he tucked the remaining four leaflets in his back pocket and pushed his empty wheelbarrow from stall to stall, looking for Nan and Grandad. He looked for ages until eventually he came close to the organisers’ table and heard his own name over the Tannoy.
“Would Luke Walker please go to the ice cream van. Would Luke Walker please go to the ice cream van, near the car park and the toilets.”
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Story continues tomorrow 🙂
To read the whole of Chapter 11 now, click here 🙂
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vegan, vegetarian, vegan children’s story, vegan children’s book, books, children’s books, juvenile fiction, veggie kids, vegan children, animals, cows, animal farming, animal rights
For chapters 1 to 10 click here 🙂
Chapter 11 continued from yesterday:
He smiled broadly as he considered how fortuitous this outing had turned out to be; how lucky it was that this week of all weeks he’d needed a wheelbarrow.
***
Nan and Grandad loved to go to car boot sales, antique fairs and flea markets. They would drive for miles to get to them and rarely a Sunday went by without Nan acquiring a ‘new’ old plant pot, or handbag, or garden bench, or record or book or who knows what. So, when Luke decided he needed a few tools for his allotment – a rake, a bucket or two, and a wheelbarrow – he asked Mum to ask Nan if he could go with them that weekend. She said yes, as long as he behaved himself and didn’t eat or drink anything in Grandad’s car, or put his feet on the seats.
“Will she ever get over the chocolate biscuit/chewing gum incident?” he thought. “It wasn’t even my gum – it had got stuck on my shoe because of a dropper and the chocolate crumbs … ”
Anyway, he promised to be good, and it was arranged.
Six days later, Luke was sitting in the back of Grandad’s car; seatbelt on; feet on the floor; no food or drink whatsoever. They turned into a farm lane and drove past a field of grazing cows, one of whom had a baby with her. They waited in a long queue of cars approaching the flea market and Luke was able to watch mother and baby for a few minutes.
He could see how attentive the mother was to her baby and how the baby followed his mother wherever she went. It was nice to watch. Then he saw two farmers with a wheelbarrow walk over to them and lift the baby into it. The baby cried out for his mum and the mum tried to get to her baby but one of the farmers obstructed her so that the other one could wheel the barrow away. He walked briskly, almost breaking into a run to get to the gate as quickly as possible and the mother cow hurried after them, calling all the time to her baby and him calling back to her. The farmer with the wheelbarrow got through the gate and closed it and the other one climbed the fence. They put the calf into a trailer and drove away in the Land Rover that towed it, along the track that bordered the field, until they got to the road and were soon out of sight. The whole time the mother cow was running along the edge of the field, trying to keep up with them, calling for her baby. When the trailer was out of sight she just stood at the fence and called and called, a most miserable, pining sound, as she watched the direction in which they’d fled, pleading for her baby’s return.
“Where are they takin’ ‘im? Are they gonna bring ‘im back?” Luke desperately asked his grandparents.
“What love?” said Nan. She hadn’t been watching.
“The baby cow! They took ‘im away from ‘is mum! Why did they do that? When will they bring ‘im back?”
“They won’t,” said Grandad, matter-of-factly.
“What?! Why not?” Luke demanded.
“The farmer keeps cows for their milk. He needs to sell as much milk as possible so he can’t have the calves drinking his profits can he? He’s got to make a living. Way of the world Luke, you might as well get used to it.”
Luke was outraged. He’d known instinctively that it wasn’t right to steal a cow’s milk and was certain it couldn’t be natural to drink it if you weren’t a baby cow, but he’d had no idea that farmers actually kidnapped babies away from their mothers; that a mother who’d done nothing wrong, who was giving him her milk, was not even allowed to keep the baby who made the milk possible. And the baby – what would happen to the baby?
“Does everybody know this? Does everybody know what the horrible farmer is doin’?” Luke felt that surely people wouldn’t buy the milk if they knew.
“He’s not horrible Luke,” Nan tried to explain, “cows are not people, they don’t have the same feelings and emotional attachments that we have.”
“Yes they do! Din’t you see? Din’t you see ’em together? They love each other!”
“Luke,” Nan answered quietly, “the farmer’s got to earn …”
“I could earn a livin’ stealin’ other people’s jewel’ry and sellin’ it to someone else, but if I did that you’d tell me off!”
“It’s not the same …”
“Too right it’s not the same coz I wun’t be kidnappin’ someone’s baby!”
While Luke fumed Grandad reached the car park and they all got out of the car. Luke couldn’t stop thinking about the cow baby and the cow mum crying for each other. He trailed slowly behind his grandparents, very unhappy in the realisation that this was the way of the world and there was nothing he could do about it, not really, not for that baby or that mum.
“Grown ups always say ‘you must be good’, ‘you must be kind’ and then they do things what they know is unkind,” Luke mumbled frustratedly to himself, “they don’t follow their own rules, so they can’t expect me to follow ’em. They should follow my rules – mine make more sense, mine do what they say instead of just say and not do!”
And so, as he railed against the world, he wandered away from his grandparents and browsed the stalls alone. He wasn’t worried. He’d find them later.
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Story continues on Monday 🙂
To read the whole of Chapter 11 now, click here 🙂
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vegan, vegetarian, vegan children’s story, vegan children’s book, books, children’s books, juvenile fiction, veggie kids, vegan children, animals, cows, animal farming, animal rights
Frettenham, Norfolk
Wendy Valentine’s amazing
Her firey compassion don’t stop blazing.
Her sanct’ry is home to many a horse,
It goes without saying, she’s vegan of course!
There’s chickens and ducks and budgies and turkeys,
And sheep and cows and llamas and donkeys.
There’s rabbits and emus, alpacas and deer,
There’s even some chipmunks and goats live here.
But rescuing’s not all that Hillside does,
They also investigate farms because
They need to make public the horror that’s hidden
Behind the farm gates of those animal prisons.
❤ 🙂 ❤
Hillside is now home to over 3000 animals and is one of the UK’s most successful campaigning organisations for the animals’ cause. They have always known that one of the main reasons animals are left to suffer in factory farms is because people have little or no idea about the immense cruelty involved in their food production.
East Peckham, Tonbridge, Kent
Marion and Mark made FRIEND
And such good friends they are,
To pigs and goats and cows and sheep
And turkeys and geese and more.
They give a gift to Death Row souls
The best gift they could give:
Forever freedom in paradise,
Now they can really live.
And they do more, they do for sure,
Showing how to go vegan, they teach.
They strive for a world where FRIEND’s needed no more,
To help future souls they can’t reach.
❤ 🙂 ❤
On a beautiful 10 acre site nestled in between the orchards and hop farms of rural Kent, established in 1994 with the purchase of a small lamb at a livestock market, FRIEND is a working animal sanctuary with around 100 former farm animals and companion animals. Animals find their way there in all sorts of ways. Some are rescued from places of abuse, some arrive following the death of their guardian. Some despicable people abandon their animals by throwing them over the fence. No matter how they get there, they are all welcome to live the rest of their lives as naturally as possible with little human interaction.
FRIEND provides a no kill, free roaming (as far as possible and safe) home to cows, sheep, goats, chickens, ducks, geese and turkeys. Their 30+ pigs live in their own paddock with wallows. Some of their cats are feral and some are house dwellers. All of their dogs love walking in the meadow.
Promoting veganism is an important part of what they do. They are pleased to meet supporters at their summer open days and introduce them to the animals, who are of course the best ambassadors for a cruelty free life. They do ask that no one brings dogs with them on their visit, as the sanctuary’s residents are free roaming.
They rely solely on donations from the public and put on events to raise money. Financial donations are spent on food, bedding, essential equipment and veterinary bills.
Hugletts Wood Farm Animal Sanctuary
Dallington, East Sussex
Imagine a place where cows can live
Their whole lives out in peace.
They’re rescued from the dairy hell
But now live free from cheese.
Big and strong and vulnerable
They’re right where they should be,
A home of love with Wenda and Matt,
They’re even pleased to meet you and me.
Hugletts Wood is a vegan farm,
They grow vegetables and fruits.
The sale of these provides the funds
For their compassionate pursuits.
❤ 🙂 ❤
Hugletts Wood Farm provides sanctuary to cows and their friends. A home for life to farm animals and birds, rescued from the misery of the meat and dairy industry and the horrors of the slaughterhouse.
Hugletts Wood farm is the only farm animal sanctuary in the UK that operates a dedicated Cow Protection Program. It is also the only vegan farm in the UK that runs such a sanctuary.
They try to self-fund as much as possible, growing vegetables and fruits and producing a whole range of woodland products and natural Ahimsa compost but always welcome your support in whatever form it may take!
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So she told him, “going vegan would solve your bovine TB problem. Leave the badgers alone and grow carrots!”
“Ooh, and what did he say?”
“Nothing yet, he can’t think of an answer.”
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vegan, vegan growing, vegan farming, cows, animals, badgers, food, health, vegan cartoon, vegan comic, vegetarian, plant food
Luke Walker and the new shoes
Luke was having a stressful day.
“It’s not fair!” he thought, “I don’t want new shoes; I don’t need new shoes.”
He looked down at his left plimsoll for proof and was satisfied that he could hardly see his big toe.
“In fact,” he said out loud, “I’m sure if someone who dint know it was there looked at my feet, they wun’t notice it at all.”
Mum disagreed. She quite unreasonably insisted that a big toe sticking through a hole in one’s shoe was an unmistakable sign that it was time to get new ones.
It was 4.17pm. Luke and Mum were in the fifth and final shoe shop their home town had to offer.
“This is it Luke,” Mum said testily, “this is the last one. We will be buying shoes from this shop.”
She picked out four different styles and put them down in front of him.
“Choose one.”
Luke looked at them with disgust.
“ Brown? You want me to wear brown shoes? I am not wearin’ brown shoes!”
Mum removed the two brown ones and, through gritted teeth said of the remaining two,
“Choose one of these or I will choose for you!”
If he had to have new shoes when he didn’t even need new shoes he would have chosen blue ones. He would have chosen blue plimsolls. They were comfortable. They were good for running in. And blue happened to be his favourite colour. But Mum said plimsolls were not proper shoes. She said they were not suitable for wearing in wet weather. She said they were not smart enough for school. She said he had to have those shiny sort of hard shoes that give you blisters for the first two weeks. Luke had put up strong resistance all day long but now it looked like he would have to compromise. It came down to two different black shiny shoes and one of them had tassels.
It was clear that he wasn’t going to get the plimsolls so the best he could do was make sure he didn’t get the tassels. He chose the lace-ups. Mum exhaled.
“Finally,” she said.
After Luke had tried them on and walked up and down on the carpet in them, and Mum had squeezed the toe ends of them to see how much growing room there was, the shop lady boxed them up. But just as Mum was about to pay, Luke remembered something. He’d heard a horrible rumour at school which he hoped wasn’t true but he had to be sure. He’d heard Katia tell Susan that shoes are made of cow skin! It was too shocking to contemplate and Luke had assumed Katia, who was always melodramatic, was making it up to get attention. But could she have been telling the truth?
“What are they made of?” Luke asked the shop lady.
“These are made from quality …..”
“Canvas!” Mum interrupted, “they’re made of the same material your plimsolls are made of but they’re sprayed with a special substance that makes them hard and shiny.”
Luke was surprised at his Mum for rudely interrupting someone who was already talking. The times she’d told him off for doing that. And the shop lady was obviously surprised at her too as she looked at her quite strangely. But in a way Luke was glad to discover his Mum didn’t always do everything right. It made her a bit more human.
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continues tomorrow 😀
or you can read the whole story here now 🙂
You’ll need tissues for this one but you’ll love the fairy tale ending 🙂
These guys are amazing. Not only do they provide sanctuary for over 2000 rescued animals, they also do undercover investigations into farms which lead to the exposure of horrible cruelty and the prosecution of the perpetrators. Take a look at what they’ve accomplished over the last 20 years and support them if you can 🙂
Click here for info about how you can help 🙂
10 acres of land will support:
61 people growing soya
or
24 people growing wheat
or
10 people growing maize
or
2 people raising cattle.
****
“The world’s cattle alone consume enough food to sustain nine billion people, which is what the world’s human population is projected to be by 2050.”
“Hee hee” said the cow,
“Woo hoo” said the hen
“Hurrah!” said the sow
And the sheep cheered again.
“He did it!” they cried
As they skipped and they ran,
“Farmer’s eyes opened wide,
And he became vegan!”
And it’s true! It’s happening again and again!
Click here for some wonderfully moving true stories of animal farmers who awoke to the reality of what they were doing and completely turned things around 🙂
A friend of Vegan Smythe’s by the name of Sarah told him the story of her light bulb transformation from vegetarian to vegan. He loved the story so much that he made it into a song.
For more lovely vegan music, check out our Music Page 😀
Welcome back to story time 🙂 sit back and relax, we’re going to tell you about the lovely Deidra
Where are you going Deidra? is one of our favourite, and one of the most popular, stories on this site so when we decided to publish a compilation of short stories and rhymes for little ones we really wanted to include it. Unfortunately the new book – entitled “Why are you a vegan?” And other wacky verse for kids – is full of rhyming stories (of course), and Deidra is not one of those.
So, we made it into one – and here it is, the true-ish story of Deidra the dairy cow, in rhyme, in case you’re interested.
This is how it begins:
Once there was a dairy farm
With fifty lovely cows.
Most of them were black and white
But some of them were brown.
***
Gripping stuff I know! 😉
Where are you going Deidra? – In Rhyme
The Goodreads Giveaway of Where are you going Deidra? has begun!
For a chance to win a signed copy of this paperback click here
😀
Three brown cows. Three brown cows.
See how they run. See how they run.
They all run after the human ilk,
Who kidnap their calves and then steal their milk,
The cows want their calves back, the humans can’t bilk,
The three brown cows.
For more nursery rhymes and wacky verse for kids click here 😀
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vegan nursery rhymes
Well, sort of 😉
DAIRY COWS ESCAPE AND PLUNDER THE CORN FIELD!
(we hope they enjoyed every second of it!)
As if to say “Yeah, what you gonna do about it?!”
All this week I’ve been in denial about my dissatisfaction with Where are you going Deidra? I was so excited about finishing it, and I’d set myself a target of the end of last week, that I didn’t pause to think about whether it really was finished. I was so focussed on getting across the message about the true cost of dairy farming, that I temporarily lost sight of my primary intention – to provide happy, positive, vegan inspiration for children, not to depress them. I think it’s ok for me to put more serious, grown up items on the blog occasionally, and I think it’s important to be open and truthful about the harsh realities of animal exploitation. I’m very glad I posted the heart-breaking story about the dairy cow who made the decision to hide one of her twins in the woods and give the farmer the other, rather than lose both. Everyone needs to know that. She deserves to have her story told and I know that it has touched the hearts of everyone who has read it. The same goes for my poem. But for the children I want to provide hope, happiness and enjoyment.
Positivity is the way forward and positivity, fun and entertainment is the way we want to encourage veganism at Violet’s Vegan Comics. We want to give something good to bright, happy, kind, veggie children. And we want to enlighten the instinctively compassionate little ones who haven’t heard of veganism but who are naturally inclined towards it. The stories on this website are for all children – even grown up ones – and I hope they will be enjoyed by everyone who reads them.
I therefore decided Where are you going Deidra? wasn’t finished. It needed a fully rounded happy ending that all children’s stories should have. So today I’ve finished it. I’ve worked all day and I’m pleased with it now.
Then I made double chocolate chip cookies (I added some fair trade cocoa to the recipe from Jasmine #3 ) which gave my day a very very satisfying ending indeed 🙂
VEGAN DOUBLE CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES (not a brilliant photo but, take my word for it, they’re good!)
I’m tired, my knees ache, I have sore feet,
My belly is heavy with child inside.
Head is aching from the blistering heat,
What’s coming is worse, I’m desperate to hide.
****
Last year I cheerfully bore my first child,
All the discomfort and pain were worth it.
My love for him instant, instinctive, wild,
Overwhelmed me, the light in my heart lit.
****
I washed him and nursed him, my suckling angel,
My purpose in life was now clear to me –
To love him, protect him and teach him well.
Like any other mother I would be.
****
The sun set that day and the bright moon rose,
And we spent a blissful night together.
Brief nirvana before that bitter dose,
When hell swallowed me whole, meat and leather.
****
At dawn I heard their heavy stomping feet,
They approached us as I was feeding him.
Without shame they just pulled him off the teat,
I jumped and bellowed but couldn’t stop them.
****
I suppose I went out that day and grazed,
My anguish unheard, unnoticed even.
Like the others I stood, I laid down, dazed.
Can’t comprehend, can’t believe. I’m broken.
****
Now aching with the weight of my udder,
Infection inflames, I wince when they suck the
Milk from my teats, by machine, I shudder.
Bereft of my child, enslaved non-mother.
Go Vegan to keep mother and child together!
And look at Where are you going Deidra? – it’s got a happy ending 🙂
Photo Credit: Joan Bryden Photography http://www.wildcardwalks.co.uk/photo-galleries-farm-cattle.html
I just found a story here, on the globalanimal.org website, which is a wake up call for all animal lovers who still use dairy. Just like Deidra, the mother in this story demonstrated not only the love she had for her calf, but the complicated thought process she used in her attempt to save him:
By Holly Cheever DVM:
I would like to tell you a story that is as true as it is heartbreaking. When I first graduated from Cornell’s School of Veterinary Medicine, I went into a busy dairy practice in Cortland County. I became a very popular practitioner due to my gentle handling of the dairy cows. One of my clients called me one day with a puzzling mystery: his Brown Swiss cow, having delivered her fifth calf naturally on pasture the night before, brought the new baby to the barn and was put into the milking line, while her calf was once again removed from her. Her udder, though, was completely empty, and remained so for several days.
As a new mother, she would normally be producing close to one hundred pounds (12.5 gallons) of milk daily; yet, despite the fact that she was glowing with health, her udder remained empty. She went out to pasture every morning after the first milking, returned for milking in the evening, and again was let out to pasture for the night — this was back in the days when cattle were permitted a modicum of pleasure and natural behaviors in their lives — but never was her udder swollen with the large quantities of milk that are the hallmark of a recently-calved cow.
I was called to check this mystery cow two times during the first week after her delivery and could find no solution to this puzzle. Finally, on the eleventh day post calving, the farmer called me with the solution: he had followed the cow out to her pasture after her morning milking, and discovered the cause: she had delivered twins, and in a bovine’s “Sophie’s Choice,” she had brought one to the farmer and kept one hidden in the woods at the edge of her pasture, so that every day and every night, she stayed with her baby — the first she had been able to nurture FINALLY—and her calf nursed her dry with gusto. Though I pleaded for the farmer to keep her and her bull calf together, she lost this baby, too—off to the hell of the veal crate.
Think for a moment of the complex reasoning this mama exhibited: first, she had memory — memory of her four previous losses, in which bringing her new calf to the barn resulted in her never seeing him/her again (heartbreaking for any mammalian mother). Second, she could formulate and then execute a plan: if bringing a calf to the farmer meant that she would inevitably lose him/her, then she would keep her calf hidden, as deer do, by keeping her baby in the woods lying still till she returned. Third — and I do not know what to make of this myself — instead of hiding both, which would have aroused the farmer’s suspicion (pregnant cow leaves the barn in the evening, unpregnant cow comes back the next morning without offspring), she gave him one and kept one herself. I cannot tell you how she knew to do this—it would seem more likely that a desperate mother would hide both.
All I know is this: there is a lot more going on behind those beautiful eyes than we humans have ever given them credit for, and as a mother who was able to nurse all four of my babies and did not have to suffer the agonies of losing my beloved offspring, I feel her pain.
Holly Cheever, DVM
Vice President, New York State Humane Association Member
Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association’s Leadership Council
Inspired by the true story of an Australian dairy farmer turned vegan, Violet’s Veg*n e-Comics is delighted to present ‘Where are you going Deidra?’
We hope you enjoy it 🙂
Tick tock tick tock ….
Where are you going Deidra? will be published tomorrow. You heard it here first!
Want to know where she’s going? Come back tomorrow 🙂
“Where are you going Deidra?” COMING SOON
‘Where are you going Deidra?’- New story coming soon
Make friends with cows
It’s easy, they’re lovely 🙂
You can find out soon!
Where are you going Deidra? – new comic for little ones coming soon 🙂
‘Where are you going Deidra?’ Coming soon on Violet’s Veg*n e-Comics
So where is Deidra going? And why so secretive?
You’ll be able to find out soon when this colourful story comes to Violet’s Veg*n e-Comics 🙂
Violet's Vegan Comics 