My Brother Bought a Puppy

Plus Cookie's recovery, four new pigeons, kittens in a skip, and why I keep making the Hen Haven more beautiful

You can listen to me read this post using the player above

Hello Friends,

Welcome to another Sunday Scoop from the Coop! And a big cock a doodle doo from baby Wren the rooster, or should I say big grown up Wren! On Monday he did his very first crow. I went rushing in when I heard him and I was lucky enough to capture his second crow on camera. You can see him being a proper young man here…

It feels like a big deal when Wren crows because if he had not escaped the meat industry he would have been slaughtered at only six weeks old, long before he would be crowing. The fact he is with us at this age is such a gift. And yet I feel so sad for the billions not rescued.

It’s been another busy week here at the Hen Haven, but you wouldn’t think it if you could see me now, sitting on the bed with Max the bunny propping his head on my laptop keyboard. Talk about relaxed!

Max tries to put an end to this newsletter nonsense! He says, ‘pay me attention instead!’

On Tuesday, Cookie was back to the vet for her post-op check-up. You may remember last week I had mentioned her big surgery where lots of congealed eggs were removed from her abdomen. On Tuesday I finally got to see the photos of what they had removed and Geez Louise!

How did all that even fit in her tiny little body?

Cookie at the vets for her check up, the horrible load of egg that was removed, Cookie enjoying being home

It’s also a stark reminder that even the chicken breeds that aren’t considered high production, like Cookie are still bred to lay far more eggs than their bodies can cope with.

Wherever people use animals for profit, the animals suffer.

Cookie is living proof of that.

And yet, if you saw her today, pottering around the garden all bright and curious, you would not believe she had been through such a huge operation. The vet was amazed at how well she is healing.

Speaking of reproductive issues, I was back at the vet later in the week with Chloe and Gemma.

Chloe at the vets

Chloe was rescued back in January, after being found wandering on a busy intersection. She is one of our boldest, most confident hens, always in everyone’s business, and a huge lover of grapes.

Now don’t get me wrong, everyone loves cut up grapes, but if the other hens want a bit of grape when Chloe is around, they had better be quick, because she is super speedy. Come to think of it she may actually be a superhero with super speed when it comes to her favourite treats.

She is full of personality. But being an Isa Brown you can probably already guess that she struggles with reproductive problems.

We got her an implant as soon as she arrived, but only three months later, I found her one night sitting on the bottom of the coop, away from the others who were snuggled in the straw up the top. When I lifted her up, there was a loose egg yolk underneath her. A couple of days later she was there again and there was a soft shelled egg.

I knew this would become a big problem in no time at all. So this week she went to the vet and had another implant along with some antibiotics. We are really hoping this one takes effect properly.

The vet has started adding a little dab of superglue to the implant site now, because a few implants have been wearing off too quickly lately, and the glue should help to keep them in place.

The other girl we took to the vets was our beautiful Gemma. You may remember she was dumped on a busy road with her friend Valerie .

Gemma could barely walk when she was rescued. Her abdomen was so full of fluid from reproductive disease that her organs and her air sacs were compressed and even her breathing was affected. She had an implant then, along with antibiotics and pain relief, and she improved so much. But only a month later, as I picked her up, I could feel the fluid building back up.

So off to the vet we went again. When the vet took a sample of the fluid, it was brown, which tells us there was some blood mixed in along with egg yolk, and under the microscope they found a huge amount of bacteria.

Gemma is on antibiotics and pain relief and has had another implant. Once she’s a bit stronger, she’ll go back for her ultrasound so we can see exactly what is going on in there and work out a longer term solution. For now, she is home with her little family, Valerie and Toby and they are all making the most of this beautiful autumn sunshine today.

At the vets the clinic manager mentioned that four newborn kittens had come in that morning. A man had found them in his skip bin. The manager had advised him to take the kittens to the pound, but the man said he had already been and they had told him they would put the kittens down if he left them there.

It made me feel so sad to think that this is the state of our local pound. I know that high kill rates at rural pounds are a well known problem, but I honestly didn’t realise it was quite that bad in this area. I suppose I should have guessed, given how many people around here allow their animals to breed without a second thought.

I asked if the mother cat might have given birth in the skip. They said no. It looked very much as though someone had thrown the kittens in there.

Humans just keep humaning don’t they?

This brings me to something else I have been sitting with…

I had a lovely video call with my brother last night. He lives in the UK and we are very close. He is respectful of my veganism, though I do wish that he would understand enough to make the changes himself. He is such a compassionate person in so many other ways, and a real animal lover andI had hoped we were on the same page about rescue.

On the call, he surprised me by introducing me to the most beautiful little brown terrier pup called Figgy.

Adorable Figgy on the video call and me somehow stopping my head from exploding

Figgy is beyond adorable. He is a mixed breed of Cairn Terrier and Spitz with a few other breeds in the mix. But to me he looked a little bit like a cross between a bear and fox cub. He is a bundle of fun and cuddles.

I was so happy to know that this little dog will be loved by my brother for his whole life. But I have to say I was also disappointed. Not in Figgy. Figgy is perfect. I was disappointed in my brother’s choices.

He and his partner have waited a long time to bring a dog into their family. They wanted it to be the right time. They didn’t want to be leaving a dog at home all day. Now they are in a good position and I appreciate they put thought into this rather than the very rushed, impulse decisions many people make when it comes to animals.

I asked how Figgy came to be in their lives. I was trying to balance the genuine joy of seeing this beautiful puppy with my strong belief in rescue and I could feel the twist of tension in my head to the point where I could feel a colossal headache building.

My brother explained they had been looking at ads for Cairn terriers, and because Figgy is a Cairn mix, he came up in the listings. He said there had been an accidental litter when two undesexed dogs were let out into the garden together. I pushed back a little and said it’s hardly a surprise. If you put an undesexed male dog in a garden with a female dog, they will mate. It sounded more like this person was a breeder. Later in the conversation it came out that the woman had bred many litters of puppies before.

I thought the phrase, “Don’t breed or buy whilst stray pets die” was something more people lived by, especially compassionate people like my brother, but it seems that breeders are still making a lot of money.

As I said earlier about Cookie, wherever people are looking to make money from animals, there will be abuse and there will be suffering to varying degrees. How many more litters will Figgy’s mum be expected to give birth to?

I’m reminded of last year, at the vets, when there was a delay with my appointment as all the staff were desperately trying to revive a mother dog. She was not doing well during a C section. Her humans had insisted on one more litter, against vets advice. I don’t know if she made it through.

My relationship with my little brother is very important to me. He knows full well my ideas on rescues vs breeders and I often fill him in on all the happenings here at the Hen Haven. There is almost no point going into it any further, because we have spoken about it at length before, and he would have known all of this before he introduced me to Figgy.

So from here all that is left to do is to adore Figgy.

I will likely meet him as an adult dog when I visit the UK in the future, and I will love him. But it’s another reminder of just how very challenging the world we live in can be when you think differently to most of society. And it is a bit of a punch in the face that I cannot even positively influence my brother to rescue, let alone anyone else.

I suppose that’s why it is so important to me to make the Hen Haven a true vegan sanctuary. A place that feels safe and beautiful for the animals who live here, but also for David and me. A place we can step away from the realities and cruelties of the world.

I remember the late Bede Carmody of A Poultry Place saying his sanctuary was his little land of make believe. It was his sanctuary as much as it was the animals.

I think about that a lot.

That is part of why we have been working on the enclosures lately. To make them more beautiful, more interesting, more full of life for the animals who live in them.

One of the enclosures we have been working on is the pigeon enclosure. Partly because this week, we welcomed four new pigeons. They had been rescued by one of our wonderful supporters, and we had agreed to welcome them months ago, well before we reached the point of saying we couldn’t afford anyone new. We were committed and excited to meet them.

Smudge on the roof, whilst Boots, Doc and Dolly decide the tarp makes a better perch than all the ledge we’ve provided.

David drove down towards Newcastle to collect a new pigeon coop and met the lovely woman who had rescued them. They are beautiful.

We named the grey one Smudge, the white one with fluffy feet, Boots and the paired couple Doc and Dolly.

They will join our original five to make the full pigeon family. It is going to take a while for the flock to gel together, but so far, so good. A few of them are sleeping in the house at the moment, because we don’t have enough coop space yet, and Glenn, one of our original white boys, has well and truly claimed the new coop as his own for him and his wife, Selena. I feel like they deserve this as they spent their first year in a tiny indoor guinea pig hutch before they were surrendered to us.

Where Glenn and Selina spent a year before being surrendered to us.

Glenn and Selina claimed the coop before I even had a chance to put bedding in it!

Another exciting thing that happened this week is that the pigeons have finally started to properly use the bird bath. For ages, they would only stand on the edge and peer in. Then the other day I caught them having the most enormous splash, water flying everywhere. I loved watching them.

Robyn and Eden preening in the bird bath and then…

SPLISH SPLASH!!!

We have been adding more perches and ledges, and starting to put plants in. So far I’ve only added two plants to this enclosure, but I am going to contact my local Bunnings to see if they will donate some plants.

I’ll keep you updated on how that goes. Right now, our finances really don’t allow us to go out and buy more plants. Every spare dollar has to go on feed and upcoming vet bills, and we have another expensive vet week ahead of us.

Even though the finances are a bit scary, knowing that I have the support of the people reading this means so much.

Last week, I set a goal of getting to twenty paid subscribers here on Substack. I thought that number would be a sign that, one day, we could build into a more sustainable rescue, and get back to actively rescuing, which is not something we are financially able to do right now.

We didn’t quite get there, but we came very close!

We have three wonderful new paid subscribers this week! One more and we have reached twenty. It feels like such a great start. Incredibly helpful, but also a sign that we are heading in the right direction, and that we can keep making this work.

I have a lot of hope! If you would like to support us by becoming a paid subscriber you can do so below.

And if you have already donated or are a hen hero then THANK YOU!!!

Right. The sun is still shining, and I have animals to cuddle. So I will say goodbye and wish you the most wonderful week.

Love Catherine x

https://henrescue.org/donate

P.S Gunshots started nearby whilst I was recording the audio of this article. I do hope no animals are being hurt. It’s hard to concentrate on anything when I hear the gun shots.