Please don’t use my images without permission. All images are Copyright Tamara Kenneally
Marked For Slaughter
We drove past a cattle holding yard. The place they keep animals until they are ready to load them onto the trucks and then drive them to the abattoir. They were all penned in together with very little room and no water or food. They waited there all day and all night.
We stopped and I tried to get my camera through the cyclone fence to take photos of their faces. They jostled around, looking at me with their big brown eyes, half in fear and half in curiosity. There was nothing I could do to help while they stood there and waited, and waited, and waited until their slaughter.
Farm animals are, more often than not, treated as nothing. They have no rights. They are seen as a business. They are seen as money and they are seen as meat. These cows, stuck in a small holding yard awaiting the truck to take them to their slaughter, were alot more than that. Each was an individual, just like you and I. I took these photos through a cyclone fence and through tears. No one needs to eat meat. This doesn’t have to happen.
Please don’t use my images without permission. All images are Copyright Tamara Kenneally
At The Show
Each year I visit several agricultural shows, the big city ones and the country ones. No matter how big or how small, the one thing they all have is animals. The one thing they all share is the proud displays of the animals that are used for human food.
I take photos of the trapped, caged chickens. I take photos of the sheep stuck in tiny pens. I take photos of the cows given prizes for how good their rump will taste. I take photos of the terrified baby animals in the animal nursey who have no mother to hide behind.
The most disturbing part of my show visit is always the animal nursery. In the animal nursery, young animals are let loose in an indoor shed with the public. People are allowed to touch, hug and poke and prod animals who have no place to hide or escape. Ewes give birth to their lambs in full view of the public and newly hatched chicks and ducklings are handled by everyone and anyone. I always hear alot of “oohs” and “aahs” regarding the baby animals, but I never hear anyone question why the baby animals aren’t with their mothers. Bobby calves walk around aimlessly trying to suckle on people’s pants and bags, hoping their mother might be someone, somewhere. I fail to see how this complete dominantion and control over these poor farm animals can teach children respect for animals.
The turkey in the image above was in this cage pacing up and down and calling out in distress. He was an exhibit at the Royal Melbourne Show. He did this all day. He was so stressed out.I sat with him for thirty minutes the first time and listened as every man over the age of twenty made a comment about him being dinner. “Yum. Dinner” was the most popular comment made.I went back later and sat with him again while he paced and cried out, and still, every man said “Yum. Dinner”.Imagine being so hard of heart and disconnected to a living being that you could make fun of such a distressed, frightened animal. These are the types of people who crush my hope for animals (and the world) into tiny little pieces.
I watched as the hen in the photo above, ran around the Royal Melbourne Show Animal Nursery looking for somewhere to hide. She tried to dodge the children, but she couldn’t. She was picked up, dropped, chased and screamed at. She was terrified. She was so desperate to find somewhere up high for safety.I grabbed her and walked through the screaming hordes of families until I found the fence that all the other hens were hiding behind and well, didn’t they look shocking. About 30 girls who all looked so sick. I know chickens and I know when they are sick and half of those girls won’t make it through the show because of shock, being dropped (causing broken bones or broken eggs inside them) or because of lack of water. That’s right, they couldn’t reach the water in the water trough. I demanded they be given water and was greeted with a lot of blank stares. Those poor girls. I wish I could’ve taken them all with me.
As I stood there and watched these beautiful motherless ducklings in the image above, hatched just for the royal melbourne show, a mother and her 4 year old daughter came and stood beside me. The daughter looked up at her mother with a concerned look on her face and said “But where is the mumma duck?” and the mother lied back “Oh, she is just sleeping out the back”.Imagine if you could be honest with children from the get go about what we do to animals, how we breed them to eat and abuse them in every way possible. We could actually get some more amazing people in the world then. Some people who believe in standing up for others and changing things. Some people who want to be more than apathetic drones. Imagine.
The signs all over the “Paddock To Plate” shed at the Royal Melbourne Show were all about pointing out the uses of poultry….” They can be used as eggs and meat blah blah blah”. The signs didn’t actually stop to tell people that these birds are more than just meat and egg machines. The signs didn’t say how smart they are, how they form such close bonds with each other and their caretakers, how each one does actually have a unique personality and how each one desperately wants to live.
Was this billboard supposed to make me feel proud? All I could think of was the million of individual, young hens used and abused for their eggs daily. The ones in the cages, the ones in the barns, the ones who are free range, the ones who are ALL slaughtered at 18 months old who are seen as nothing but an egg. Nothing but a lousy dollar sign. Yeah, animal cruelty is a wonderful thing to be proud of.
The following slideshow is the series that is a work in progress, entitled “At The Show”
Please don’t use my images without permission. All images are Copyright Tamara Kenneally
Turkeys
What’s that you say? You think Turkeys are ugly?… and no, you don’t want to look at their photos? Well, I don’t know what you’re seeing, but I see cheekiness, love of life, friendship and beauty in every Turkey I meet. Yes, I do actually think Turkeys are beautiful. Look at that amazing colour of their feathers, some of them glisten in the sun from green to blue to black. They are big, stunning birds who are very often laughed about and misunderstood. In the wild turkeys would naturally perch at night in the trees in forests, take dust bathes when they pleased and spend the day foraging and searching for insects and bugs. Sadly, the intensive meat farming industry has taken all of these natural instincts away from turkeys just so humans can eat them whenever they please.
About 5 million turkeys are intensively farmed and eaten by Australians every year. What does this mean for these lovely birds? Just like factory farmed broiler chickens, turkeys are bred to grow as big as possible in the shortest amount of time possible. Factory farmed turkeys are killed between 10 – 17 weeks old, whereas in the wild, turkeys can live up to 10 years old. Because they are selectively bred to grow so huge, they develop leg, joint and bone disorders and they also often die of organ failure or heart disease. They live in cramped conditions, and such stressful living conditions promotes behaviours such as pecking and fighting. Instead of giving each turkey more room in these sheds, farmers cut off part of their beaks and part of their middle toes without pain relief to stop the fighting. Factory farmed turkeys get so large that they often cannot move or stand up and end up stranded on the floors of the sheds covered in their own waste.
Please think about the lives of factory farmed turkeys when you choose your next meal. Turkeys want the simple pleasures in life just like you and I. They just want to be given the chance to walk on grass, to see the sky, to breath the fresh air and to live.
This slideshow below features factory farmed turkeys from Edgar’s Mission (www.edgarsmission.org.au) and various other farms and private properties.
Please don’t use my images without permission. All images are Copyright Tamara Kenneally.
Beautiful Bruce
I can’t exactly remember when I first met Bruce. It may’ve been around 8 years ago. I remember seeing the neighbour’s bold, black and white cat sitting on our back fence meowing…..so much meowing. Bruce was a big talker. He meowed at everything. He would meow when walking past a pretty flower and meow when he was getting comfortable on a cushion. He liked to tell you exactly what he thought….constantly.
Over time, Bruce slowly moved in. He just wouldn’t leave. He was a constant fixture sleeping on his lounge chair, rolling around in the grass or dozing under the lemon tree in the backyard each and everyday. He would follow us everywhere, meowing all the time. He was a dog trapped in cat’s clothing our Bruce. Bruce had two families, ours and the family three doors up. He lived his days between both families. He was a clever boy, he would eat his dinner here and then run up to his other home to grab dinner there as well.
He shared our backyard with my sister’s cat, Chicken. Chicken barely tolerated him and for years Chicken put up with him getting in her face and getting too close to her liking (Chick liked her space). There was often alot of hissing and spitting going on between them, but sometimes we’d find them sitting very close to each other on the deck. Chicken passed away in April this year (2012) and, strangely, we said goodbye to Bruce just a week later. After we lost Chicken, we noticed Bruce had become rather withdrawn and not his usual, chatty self. We put this down to grief, but he began to get worse quite rapidly. He had Kidney failure and there was nothing that could be done. He was only nine years old.
Two families grieved Bruce. I miss him dearly. Life isn’t the same without that black and white, love of life cat. We have a stone engraved with his name on it and it sits under the lemon tree. Sometimes, for a split second, I think he’s still sitting under it.
Miss you Bruce – i …..with all my heart.
Please don’t use my images without permission. All images are Copyright Tamara Kenneally.