Listen to this. This will open your eyes..!

[Dog_ger]

Check this site out.

http://www.animalsaustralia.org/lucy_speaks/

Poor Lucy

[Footy Chick]

Yeah, Ive heard this on the radio

[Psyber]

I agree that cruelty to any animal should be illegal and I thought it was, so I would want to check their statement there - the activists do have a tendency to exagerate.

We certainly had inspectors turn up at our farm in SA years ago, when a passerby thought we were neglecting our very valuable Angora goats! They had actually eaten bracken fern through the neighbour's fence, and it causes thiamine deficiency, so they were struggling to stand up. We had done all that we could do - giving them thiamine in liquid form every few hours, and in the end we saved all but four. The inspectors agreed we had done everything we could do, short of putting 30 into a Veterinary hospital at unaffordable expense - if you could find one equipped to cope with them.

We don't give a human baby an anaesthetic or analgesia to cut the amniotic cord, nor do you use anaesthetic or analgesics to trim an Alpaca's overgrown teeth, or a sheep or goat's hooves, and the Alpaca don't even struggle because you dont trim the teeth short enough to hit the nerve. Domestic Alpaca, living on a softer diet than they would get in the Andes, would not be able to eat eventually, if you didn't do it about once a year. I've used an Elestrator to castrate goat kids - you use a gadget to put the rubber band on and everything drops off after a week or so. They don't seem to suffer and don't even scratch at it. I can assure you they would squawk if it caused pain! Goats are good squawkers. I have never docked a tail on any animal, but I did nip off a toe that was deformed on a newborn puppy once - it didn't even notice.

I don't know much about breeding pigs, but I've heard they have been known to eat their own young, or accidentally squash them - Paul Keating was a part-time pig farmer and may know! Trimming piglets teeth - or at least taking the sharp edges off with a file - probably ensures they get milk. With Alpaca you have to trim the males "fighting teeth". They are at the back, top and bottom, and sharp like rose thorns. If you don't, the males will each try to bite their rivals' testes off - and without anaesthetic or analgesia!!

I certainly don't like mulesing sheep, but I have had to pick maggots out of the living bodies of fly-blown sheep to save their lives, and that's not a job I want again. So, I have avoided breeding sheep until an affordable more humane option is found. I suspect I'd rather be mulsed than die slowly from being eaten alive by maggots though. Modern sheep, unlike Babary Sheep, are not a natural animal and would not survive long in the wild.

[Pseudo]

I would eat that particular slice of bacon with a large grain of salt.

In a previous job I got involved in a project to do with pig production. I made two or three trips to a piggery up north. This particular piggery was described as being "five star accomodation for pigs" by the owner. The pigs were NOT living in close confinement; they had a fairly spacious indoor pen to run about in. Food was available as they wanted it; all they had to do was walk through a corridor which led to a weighing platform. Based on their weight, the pigs would be let into one of two areas where different sorts of feed were available, and the pigs could feed freely before returning to the main pen.

I do not know how typical this setup was, but I can say with certainty that not every pig in the country is produced in battery conditions. I wonder exactly what percentage is.... and I would NOT trust a figure supplied to me by an animal rights activist.