More information on http://forestsfromfarms.org/

The full report is published here

The cats under our roof had a very happy  summer thanks to all the donations, the sponsors, the members of the association  NALA 85480 ! Thank you all for your continuous and loyal support. Enjoy this little video, a compilation of the very best moments of summer 2017. 

First day of our journey to the east of France. We are on a ring road in Poitiers, and we see a pigeon on the edge of the road. The cars pass it at high speed, it does not move, and its head is drooping towards the ground. Nobody stops. What can we do? .... We continue until we find a safe place to turn around because we can not imagine being at ease knowing that this pigeon remains there on that busy road.

When we get back, it's still there, but now in the middle of the road, the cars are trying  to avoid it. Nigel stops, I get out of the car. I almost have to throw myself in front of the cars to make them stop, eventhough I am on a pedestrian crossing. The pigeon tries to fly away when I approach him, and then tries to hide under a car. I catch him by his wing. I take him in my arms. He is wounded. On his left side the skin is totally open, I can see his insides, his wound smells very bad. We don't think that he will survive, so decide to look for a veterinarian in order to have him put to sleep. But where? We continue on our way to our destination. There are policemen on the side of the road checking trucks. We stop to ask them. In the next village there is a vet, they think. But no. The village is too small, just a roadside village. After passing through it we take the next exit, hoping to find a vet in another town. There's a pharmacy. So we stop and Nigel goes out to ask them. The pigeon  is still in my hands, he does not move much, he appears to be in pain, he closes his eyes and I try to give him a Reikie treatment. Nigel comes back. The people in the pharmacy were very friendly.  They located a vet, 15 kilometers away in the town of Verrières. When we arrive there, we are helped almost immediately. There is nothing to be done, as we suspected already, the pigeon is too badly hurt. The vet puts him to sleep with an injection in the neck. The pigeon passes almost instantaneously. His suffering is over.

Around 7 pm we arrive at the campsite. Luckily we booked in advance. We both are exhausted.

Just like cats and dogs have parasites such as fleas and ticks, so chickens have their own parasites. One particularly nasty one is the red mite. It hides in tiny cracks and crevices in the chicken house during the day and comes out at night to suck the blood from chickens. 

Even relatively low levels of infestation can keep the chickens awake at night as they scratch the inching bites of the mites. Higher levels of infestation can result in irritability, stress, insomnia, baldness, cannibalism, wounds becoming infected, and even death.

Prevention is obviously better than cure, but it appears to be very difficult to eradicate an infestation of red mite from chicken house. According to research by a Dutch university over 80% of chicken farms are infested with 27% having extreme infestations. This is, of course, a major animal welfare problem and also an economic problem for the farmer who may see a fall in egg production.

So when a company started to market a product that proved to be very effective against red mite it became very popular. It appears that nearly two hundred farms used this wonder product. Unfortunately, it had one big disadvantage: it uses an insecticide, Fipronil which is not authorised for use on laying hens. This is because it is excreted by the hens in their eggs and it is moderately toxic to humans.

Once this was discovered there was a big scandal in the Netherlands which led to many millions of eggs being destroyed. As the product is no longer being used, in time, the hens will eliminate it from their bodies and it will no longer be present in their eggs. However during this period the farmer still has to feed them and take care of them. This appears to be unacceptable to many farmers who have been given permission to cull their healthy, but temporarily unprofitable, hens. Hundreds of thousands have already been gassed to death with carbon dioxide. Many more hundreds of thousands are likely to follow. So much for animal welfare.

However, perhaps the most shameful aspect of this whole affair is that in the EU there appears to be no effective treatment for red mite. How is possible that in these so-called civilised countries over 300 million laying hens are being exposed to red mites without any effective treatment?

We prepared an open letter to the Dutch press and any other interested parties about the scandal which you can read  here (in english)

The 2nd of February the European Commission launched a public consultation on the future of the Common Agricultural Policy.  For three months it gives anyone interested, citizens, organisations, associations and any other interested parties the chance to have their say on the future of the Common Agricultural Policy. The input will be used for a  draft Commission communication  about its'  potential policy options for the future. We have prepared a document which we will send to them with our thoughts about the future of farming, animal farming in particular. We invite everyone to do the same. You can read our contribution if you click on the button below. If you agree with our analysis feel free to use any information you find useful from our contribution.  

Once again avian influenza has hit poultry farms not only in France but all over the world.

Once again millions of healthy poultry are slaughtered or gassed in gas chambers, as a preventative measure to prevent the spread of the disease.

And once again, the farmers are asking for subsidies from taxpayers to solve their problems.

This futile and scandalous massacre can never eliminate the avian flu virus. Moreover, the high concentrations of poultry on farms create a perfect environment for encouraging a lethal mutation to a form that is transferable from animal to human (which has already happened and what has already caused about 100 deaths) and from person to person.

In fact, researchers have already succeeded in making the virus transmissible from person to person under laboratory conditions and they are convinced that the mutation they have obtained may very well appear spontaneously in nature. According to the former Director General of the World Health Organization, Dr Lee Jong Wook, "It is only a matter of time before an avian flu virus - most likely H5N1 - acquires the ability to be transmitted from human to human, sparking the outbreak of human pandemic influenza. We don't know when this will happen. But we do know that it will happen." 

It is time to tackle the problem at the source by questioning the methods of raising poultry. They are bad for human health, bad for the future of the planet and bad for animal welfare that is enshrined in the law. 

Governments listen to the complaints of the poultry farmers while allowing the animals, who have no words and no vote, to suffer silently.

Today we live in a complex world where there are many complicated relationships and everything seems to be interconnected. We also get incessantly bombarded with so much information that we can't really make sense of it all. This means that we have to some extent rely on others to help us understand it. Unfortunately, one design fault with the human 

mind is that it likes to find patterns and simple connections between things. This means that it is surprisingly easy for other people to exploit us. Unfortunately another trait is to become emotionally invested in an idea or a position and refuse to accept facts that undermine that position or proof that it is wrong.

I was recently watching a talk show on Dutch TV and one of the panel explained how populists like Wilders (and Trump, Farage etc) get traction...

First they find something to complain about. We measure so many things that you can always find something: unemployment, growth, exchange rate, etc. Then claim that it's been stolen from us or destroyed or some other emotive term. Finally blame it on someone. One recent example is jobs.

1) Many people who are looking for work can't find jobs. 

2) Our jobs are being stolen and destroyed. 

The popularist answers, “Immigrants and foreign countries.” And then continues,“Vote for me and I'll stop them.”

We've all seen recently just how successful that has been with approximately half the voters falling for this approach. It's 

unfortunate, because in the real world, there are many causes of unemployment: workers not having the right skills, advances in automation, out sourcing, sectors becoming redundant, lack of competitiveness, lack of investment, lack of demand, uncertainty and worries about the future...

Therefore, it should be pretty clear that blaming immigrants and other countries is most likely not going to solve the unemployment issues. 

Other measures are going to have to be taken if the popularist doesn't want to lose support. One is to actually treat the causes, but quietly and without drawing any attention to the steps being taken. However, this requires some expertise and the means to implement those steps. Another much easier way is to find someone else to blame. Continuing with the theme of unemployment, in some countries it's now the unemployed themselves who are seen as the problem...

This is not the way to tackle difficult problems. We should try to remember that if someone tells you that there is a simple solution to a complex problem then it probably means either that they are a fool or that they think that you are a fool.

It was only one day after our action at Planète Sauvage near Nantes (see last post) that we got the very  sad news that one of their young dolphins Aïcko died. You'll find his story in french on this site. It goes without saying that another event was organised in which we participated.  

A few years ago, before we started our association NALA in France, a couple of stray cats decided to squat in our barn. They weren't too keen on having contact with us and as they didn't annoy the chickens we left them to their own devices. 

A year later there were four as they had a couple of kittens. The next year we discovered a litter of five kittens so realised that we had to take some action. We found out that the SPA was giving out vouchers for the sterilisation of stray cats so contacted them and explained the situation. They agreed to supply vouchers for all the cats: all we had to do was catch them!

Mission Impossible one was Mummy and the kittens: We gathered the kittens and put them in a box inside a large cage. We attached a long length of rope to the door of the cage and installed a video camera. A monitor linked to the camera was hidden around the corner and, with one hand on the end of the rope, we settled down in front of the monitor to await Mummy's return. Sure enough, after a little while Mummy entered the cage to tend to her kittens. A tug on the rope closed the door of the cage and voila we had Mummy and the kittens trapped. We then moved the cage into the house where we had a room prepared for them. As you can imagine, Mummy was not best pleased at this turn of events and made her displeasure known in a quite vocal manner accompanied by teeth and claws. So it was with some trepidation once in the room that we opened the door of the cage. Mummy didn't want to leave the cage immediately so we beat a hasty retreat and left her to her own devices. 

When we next entered the room Mummy freaked out and ran around the room like crazy. She even managed to run most of the way up a glass panelled door which is quite an impressive feat. So we just changed the litter tray, put down some food and left. Over the next few days she began to tolerate us and didn't mind when we interacted with her kittens. This was just as well, as we knew that we had to keep them for a number of months until the kittens were big enough to be sterilised.

Meanwhile we had Tommy, the father, Sonny and Ellie to catch and take to the vet. We decided to try to capture them all in one night. So we borrowed a trap from the SPA and bought two more. We set the traps in the early evening and waited for a while before going out to check. Much to our surprise and delight we found one trap occupied by a rather disgruntled Sonny. So we picked up the trap, brought it into the house and put it in the bathroom. A while later we checked the traps again and found that we had caught Tommy, so put him with Sonny. Finally Ellie too entered a trap and joined her family in the bathroom. Job done we thought and went to bed: but not to sleep as the trapped trio treated us to an acapella rendition of "We're unhappy and we want you to know it" all night long.

Come the weary dawn a bleary-eyed, not so dynamic duo loaded the three traps into the car and armed with vouchers from the SPA took the cats to the vet for their operations. All went well, so Tommy, Sonny and Ellie were released back in the barn.

Fast forward five months: Mommy and her kittens were ready for their turn with the vet. By this time, the kittens were completly domesticated and even Mummy had learnt to accept us. In fact they were all so cool, calm and collected, that when we presented them to the vet, he didn't believe that they were covered by the SPA's vouchers and phoned the SPA to check. Once reassured that he would get paid, he took them and carried out the operations.

We had been looking after them for five months and had become quite attached to the kittens. We also realised that they wouldn't thrive if we turfed them out of the house to live in the barn. Therefore we decided to keep three of them while two went to live with family. Mummy was still wild at heart so we let her out of the house and she happily rejoined Tommy, Sonny and Ellie.

All went well for a number of years until we realised that Ellie had disappeared. We never found out what happened to her. Then just before Christmas a couple of years ago Mummy appeared in a very weakened condition with a crushed fore leg. We took her to our favourite vet who managed to save the leg. Unfortunately as it healed it twisted upon itself, so that instead of walking on her toes, Mummy walks on her ankle on that leg. During her convalescence, Mummy stayed in the house with us and became really attached to us. It's just as well, as with her handicap we didn't want to put her back outside. So Mummy became a house cat and integrated well with the others.

Tommy and Sonny stayed as barn cats, completely inseparable. They became more tolerant of us and Tommy especially allowed us to get quite close to him. It was because of this that we noticed that he started to dribble. Rightly concluding this was not a good sign we managed to capture him and take him to the vet. There we discovered that most of his teeth were rotten and that he had a huge infection in his mouth. After an operation to remove the teeth and a course of antibiotics Tommy was as right as rain... or so we thought.

About a year later we noticed that he had a swelling on his jaw. We couldn't get close enough to catch him, so took some photos and sent them to the vet for advice. All she could say was that it didn't look good and that we should bring him in for a closer look. Hmm easier said than done as Tommy was wary of the traps. In fact it took us nearly two months and a number of failures before we managed to catch him and take him to the vet. The vet put him under and examined his mouth. The situation was not good and the prognosis bleak: an inoperable tumour. She gave him no more than six months to live.

In fact it was less than that before we noticed that he was starting to deteriorate. It's always difficult to decide when to take an animal to be put down: not too early, while they're still enjoying life and not too late when they're really suffering. The swelling had continued growing, so remembering that it had taken weeks to catch him the last time, we decided to try to catch him straight away. This time it went smoothly and within days we brought him once again to the vet. Once he was unconscious and on the examining table, Tommy's dire state of health was revealed: the tumour had spread and he only had days, at most, to live. So with heavy hearts we had him put to sleep there and then.

So that left poor Sonny all by himself in the barn while his mother and his siblings lived with us. We decided that the best thing for him would be to catch him and release him in our garden which is surrounded by a fence that stops cats from getting out. That way he could still enjoy an out door life, but also enter the house if he wanted to. That was a couple of weeks ago and although he still hides from us, he gets on well with our cats.

What we have also discovered is that for discerning cats our barn seems to be a very desireable residence. Within days of it becoming vacant, we noticed a slightly tatty ginger and white cat had moved in. So we acted straight away, put out a trap and caught him. A vist to the vet showed that he wasn't identified, so we had him sterilised and brought him home to recuperate. It quickly became apparent that Jahe, as we've called him, must have been a house cat at some stage because he is really friendly although in the beginning he would flinch when we tried to stroke him. Perhaps he was mistreated and then abandoned? We'll never know.

But what really concerns us is how long will it before the next squatter arrives...