Transcript
Hope:
Welcome to the Hope for the Animals Podcast sponsored by Compassionate Living. I’m your host, Hope Bohanec. You can find all our past shows and more information by going to our website, Hope for the Animals podcast.org. And you can also join us on social media; we’re on Facebook and Instagram. Please join the conversation, share some posts, you can find us at Hope for the Animals Podcast.
So we talk a lot about sanctuaries on this podcast because well, I love animals. And I admire so much the role that sanctuaries play in our movement. The animal advocacy movement has a lot of heart and people that dedicate themselves to rescuing and caring for animals directly. That takes a lot of heart and a lot of love. It’s really hard work. And then we get to see these individual animals as individuals. Through these stories of rescue, we see them as worthy of life and agency and a life without suffering. So sanctuaries play a really important role, I think, in our movement. And the sanctuary movement has really grown considerably since when I first started doing this work, 30 years ago. Back then, there were just a handful of very large sanctuaries, but now, just in the last like 10 years or so, farmed animal sanctuaries are popping up like spring flowers everywhere. And really interesting innovations in sanctuary work as well. For instance, focuses on particular species of animals like fish rescue, we had Gwendolyn Church on the podcast talking about her fish rescue, and like Goatlandia, focusing on goats that we talked about just a couple of episodes ago. Also microsanctuaries. We did a whole series last year on microsanctuaries and the microsanctuary movement around smaller scale rescue. And today we’re going to talk about another innovation and evolution of sanctuaries and that is what is being called, “Animal Centered Design.” I really love this because it’s so focused on animals, the needs of the individual species, and the individuals themselves. And I just I love that our guests today, Paul and Lenore of Piedmont Farmed Animal Refuge, are really sensitive and tuned in to the animals at their sanctuary and they are creating spaces for them to thrive.
But before we get into the conversation, I got a listener email that I wanted to address. She was a little unclear about something that I had said in an earlier podcast. Actually, it was the one with Deb Bloom of Goatlandia a couple of episodes ago. And you know, it’s tough when I say something in passing conversation and these interviews on the podcast that kind of need a little more unpacking, and sometimes it’s not as clear as it needs to be. So I wanted to clarify this point. So Deb and I started talking about vegan fast food and how amazing it is that there’s so many new plant based options available everywhere at all these, you know, very mainstream fast food outlets. And I said that these fast food options were not for vegans, not for us. And I wanted to clarify what I meant by that.
So it was earlier in the year that we recorded that interview and it was when KFC was debuting their Beyond Nuggets. They were introducing the plant based chicken nuggets, and there was kind of a controversy that arose amongst vegans because the nuggets were fried in the same oil as the chicken flesh nuggets in most of the KFC restaurants and some vegans were complaining, kind of up in arms, wanting a separate fryer, a separate oil fryer for the Beyond Nuggets, and others were complaining that they were highly processed. And this was frustrating to me, and I get it, I understand that issue. It grosses me out too. I wouldn’t eat those nuggets that were fried in with the flesh oil. I wouldn’t do it. I mean, I really try not to eat at restaurants that serve meat. I won’t even do that. I’m in an area where I kind of have that privilege. I’m very lucky to live in an area that has all vegan restaurants in abundance.
But I understand that issue. But what I meant when I said that these options are not for vegans is that the KFC nuggets, you know, they’re there to encourage meat eaters, and not just any meat eaters, but people who would who wouldn’t seek out vegan food normally, who wouldn’t go out of their way to eat vegan food, or even have the money or the ability to have other options other than the fast food sector. It’s to try to make it easy for them to have choices. That’s who we should be encouraging to eat these options and not putting the burden on the restaurant to accommodate vegans’ purity issues. At least not yet.
Let’s get this stuff established first, save millions of animals’ lives, possibly billions of animals’ lives with these options in fast food rather than asking for a separate fryer. You know, this is all so new and precarious. It could easily fail. They would just go back to having meat only. Right? We need to make it easy for these restaurants to offer these options and encourage them to do it. Most vegans have the option of going to a natural food store and buying vegan nuggets in the freezer section if they want to. But the KFC nuggets are for those that won’t do that or can’t do that.
I have no problem with vegan fast foods, vegan meats, vegan cheeses even if they’re highly processed. I am practical in that we should first focus on relieving the suffering of as many animals as possible. The animals are my priority here and now. That’s what I want to focus on first. We can get to the health issues later. There are plenty of other healthy options too if health as your focus now. But if these products, these vegan meats and cheeses, if they help pre vegans, new vegans, even longtime vegans that have the desire for the flavors or foods that they remember, that they were familiar with, if they can have those things without the suffering and killing of sentient beings, then I’m all for it.
I do want people to be healthy. I, myself, eat mostly whole foods. My husband and I do the low salt and oil diet and whole foods. But we do get some vegan meats and cheeses on rare occasions. I think most longtime vegans kind of move in a healthier direction naturally. So once these options are established, then we can ask for healthier ingredients, then we could ask for more healthy changes or accommodations. But my concern is to stop the suffering of animals. So I think we need to look at it through that lens first. And when KFC goes all vegan, well then we won’t even have the problem with the oil fryer thing, but then we can deal with the healthy issues getting healthier, but let’s get this stuff established first.
Also, you know, I totally get that when we see a vegan option, we want to partake. We want to feel included, right? There’s so much of the time that we don’t feel included as vegans and so when we see something vegan, we want to be able to participate. I get that, but sometimes they’re not for us. And that’s what I mean by that. Right? That’s why I’m saying that these fast food options are possibly not for vegans. Vegans can certainly eat these fast food options. That’s fine. You can certainly eat it if you want. Just please don’t complain about them. Right? That’s all I ask. Let’s think about how many lives could be saved if these products and these options succeed. So that’s what I meant. So hopefully I’ve made myself clearer.
Okay, moving on. So we haven’t had one in a while but I would like to do a Glimmers of Hope segment. The Glimmers of Hope segment is where I talk about some hopeful things that are happening for animals and I want to talk about two things that have given me a big dose of hope in the last week or so. So here are some glimmers of hope.
So there’s some really good news out of California. The new state budget includes funds, a lot of funds, for plant based meals in schools. This is a really big win. There have been a lot of groups working on this: Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, Friends of the Earth, Factory Farming Awareness Coalition, and the money goes to assist schools and serving more plant based meals and milks in California. And a local group to California, Social Compassion and Legislation, was also working on this and called it a major victory for our kids, our planet, and the animals.
I have a personal story kind of about this. A few years back, I was approached by a vegan club at a local high school. This is back when I was in Sonoma County and all the kids wanted was to have a vegan option every meal in the cafeteria. That’s all they were asking for was to have like an equivalent size vegan option every meal in the cafeteria. And it seemed like such a simple and reasonable ask so I agreed to help them. And so we met with school administrators and the cafeteria people and I couldn’t believe the resistance really, but mostly it had to do with money. They only had so much money to spend and it was all allocated and approved for certain things. And there was one woman in the cafeteria that was really sympathetic and really wanted to help and we tried to get something done. It was certainly one of my more challenging projects. And we kind of gave up when the semester ended. We realized that it was a systematic issue. One school couldn’t just make these big changes or decisions about menus. So I’m really glad to see that these organizations took it on and that they won.
The budget gives $700 million ($700 million!) to school districts to upgrade their staff training and facilities and food offerings to expand to plant based meals. It also has a health component which is good and encourages whole and minimally processed foods in plant based forms. And some of the money is going to be used to reimburse schools based on the number of plant based meals and milks that they serve. So really encouraging them to do this. Giving incentive for the schools to follow through and do as much plant based as possible.
So I think about those kids a decade ago that wanted this in their school, and I’m so glad that it’s happening. I hope maybe our demands were a starting place for this. You know, it’s so important to normalize vegan food, especially for kids. For the young people. They’re the ones that are going to have to really make the big changes, and they’re the ones that are going to have to live with our environmental destruction of mistakes. So it’s so important to make these changes now and bringing vegan food into these big institutions like the California School System, that’s going to create really huge reductions in the demand for animal products. So it’s a great start. I’m really so happy to see this.
So something else that I would love to share in our Glimmers of Hope segment is something that I saw recently that was just so incredible. So I watch The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and I really love it because, you know, the news can be so intense and so dire these days. And I love that Trevor helps us to kind of laugh about it. And I don’t know if it’s something that I should admit, that I get some of my news from Comedy Central, but Trevor, he really has such a great wit, a great way of looking at the absurdity of it all, the irony of injustices, and it’s a great way to take in the news for cynics. And on the show, if you’ve ever seen it, he has an interview segment. And I was watching the other night and he said something like, “Can a fish be conscious? Stay tuned and hear from my next guest.” And I was like, “What?”
And he had a young man on, an animal rights activist, Ryuji Chua. And it was so good. I was on the edge of my seat, I was cheering, my jaw dropped. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe I was seeing it on The Daily Show. Trevor was, you know, he was a generous meat-eating host for the most part. He started off by saying that we all know that we need to change our food system, that it’s unsustainable and that it’s terrible the way we treat animals, so that was great. And Ryuji, he just gave what I would call a masterclass on communicating the vegan message. He was amazing.
He has created this documentary called “How Conscious Can a Fish Be?” It’s available on YouTube and that’s what they were talking about. And he was so good at steering the conversation and his answers back to the animals and keeping his responses really short and clear and focusing on the animals. I mean, some of the things that Trevor was saying were kind of out in left field and it could have easily gone off the rails with too much detail or philosophy and Ryuji could have easily gotten into the weeds and the message could have been garbled or lost but he did just a fantastic job, just an amazing job of keeping it not complicated and always bringing it back to the suffering of the animals. I was so impressed. And so ecstatic really to see this on a mainstream show.
There was kind of a disappointing moment when Trevor said a couple of silly typical things about vegans. One was that really tired joke that a vegan will tell you they’re vegan, you know, like right away or without you asking or whatever. And, you know, yeah, okay, we’ve all heard that one. I really hate this one too, because it makes us sound so annoying, which is annoying. But you know, we’re trying to end the suffering of sentient beings! Vegans feel the weight of responsibility, a huge weight of responsibility, knowing the scale of the suffering, and we just want to share that information with the world. And you know, I also think that sometimes in these situations, it’s not necessarily proselytizing, or trying to get someone to go vegan when we’re telling someone that we’re vegan. It could be really a bit of self-preservation too you know, because we are sensitive to the world and it’s a very not vegan friendly world. And we might kind of be maybe subconsciously asking for people to just be aware that we’re vegan to be aware of our situation and not say or do things that are going to be offensive to us, you know, like talking about meat or hunting or fishing or whatever. Asking others to be conscious and kind with their words and actions towards us. At least towards us if they can’t be kind and conscious toward the animals. And hopefully, our example will be a reminder of the harm that they’re committing. So we think that there can be a lot going on, you know, when we tell someone that we’re vegan.
The other disappointing thing that Trevor said was that vegans can be judge-y. That we’re, you know, judging other people. And this one is frustrating as well. But more understandable, I think, because if you’ve only encountered vegans online, yeah, well, individual vegan commentators that make comments on things are unfortunately often attacking and judge-y. It’s an unfortunate result of the anonymity of the internet and our passion as animal advocates. We get overzealous, I think, and can come off as attacking and judge-y. But, Trevor, you know, not all vegans are alike. We’re a diverse group. And most of the organizations and professional animal advocates have learned that judging and attacking don’t help, don’t work, and that we need to have compassion and empathy when reaching out to people whether it be one-on-one or with online messaging. And I always like to say this, we can be angry, we can be passionate, that’s fine. Just direct that anger at the industry, at the system, not at individuals that we want to hear us, those that we want to guide to veganism. That’s not who to direct the anger towards. I think that people’s feelings on this and perpetuating these stereotypes has to do also with what side of the issue you’re on, right? I mean, do you think that the suffragettes were annoying? Were the civil rights activists judge-y? It gets more about how you feel about the issue when someone moves from annoying to a hero or a change maker. This is an issue that I feel strongly about.
But anyway, for the most part, it was really an awesome interview. Trevor would say something like, “Well, you wouldn’t like that, right?” Or “That wouldn’t make you happy.” And Ryuji would say something like, “It’s not about me. It’s not about what I’m happy about. It’s about the animals. I put myself in the animals’ place and I ask, would I want that to be done to me?” Such a beautiful deflection. And Trevor had that moment where he said, “Well, yeah, wow, if I was a fish, I wouldn’t want to be caught on a line.” He made that realization. He was like, “Yeah, wow. Okay, you’re right.” It was so wonderful.
So, on the last podcast with Molly Elwood, she said something about communicating the vegan message and how it was kind of a delicate dance. And Ryuji is just a master verbal communicator. He did an excellent job. And just having that on The Daily Show. I was so glad that Trevor didn’t have someone on that was from some big national organization that would water down the message and you know, would talk about cage free eggs or whatever. I mean, this this was animal liberation in its purest form. It was the most basic and beautiful messaging. It gave me so much hope for the future. So I will have a link to that interview in the show notes. Please check it out.
And let’s now move into our conversation for the day about new innovations. This new innovation called Animal Centered Design for farmed animal sanctuaries. I hope you enjoy it.
Hope:
All right, so today we have two guests joining us. We have Paul Drake and Lenore Braford. Paul is the design and construction leader for the animal housing and infrastructure at Piedmont Farm Animal Refuge, where he is helping to pioneer a new process called Animal Centered Design. Paul has a Master’s of Architecture and has a passion for designing sustainable structures that can improve the lives of animals. And Lenore Braford is the founder and animal care director at Piedmont Farm Animal Refuge. Lenore has nearly a decade of experience working with and enriching the lives of animals. In 2012, Lenore founded the refuge in Pittsboro North Carolina, where she leads a team of committed volunteers and staff and is taking care of some of the most special individuals you will ever meet, the beloved animal residents. So welcome to the podcast, Paul and Lenore.
Lenore:
Thanks so much for having us.
Paul:
Thanks Hope. We’re glad to be here.
Hope:
Well, I’m so glad you could join us. So we like to start with kind of a get-to-know-you question and usually we ask what your vegan origin story is. Why and when you went vegan. But since there’s two of you, I was wondering if you were vegan, well, you’re a couple, right?
Lenore:
Yes. Right.
Hope:
Yes. Okay. So, I was wondering when you went vegan, if you went vegan when you got together or before. If you were vegan before you got together or after? And if you want to incorporate your vegan origin stories into that, but I think it would be interesting to hear as a vegan couple how you both became vegan together.
Lenore:
Yeah, great question. When Paul and I first started dating neither of us were vegan or vegetarian at all.
Hope:
Wow.
Lenore:
So we’ve been we’ve been together for quite a number of years. I was the first one to go vegetarian. For me growing up, I never ate a lot of animal products. I never ate a lot of meat, just sort of because I had a distaste for it. And when I went to college, Paul and I met at Oberlin College in northern Ohio, it was the type of school that had vegan options in the cafeteria. There were a lot of really progressive students and faculty and it was an environment that was very easy to transition into being a vegetarian. So I made that move first and then later towards the end of my college years, I went vegan due to a philosophy class that I was taking.
I was an environmental studies major and this particular class was called Environmental Philosophy and we talked about a lot of different things within that realm. But one of the things we discussed was animal rights. And we read from Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation, but what really did it for me is I was randomly assigned by my professor to be part of a two person debate. And our topic was, “Is it ethical to eat animals and their products?” And I was given the pro side that it was ethical, and so I was tasked with doing research and trying to come up with true ethical arguments to say that, yes, this is something that is okay morally. And through that process, I became vegan. I essentially researched myself into being a vegan because, as you know, I’m sure, there really are not ethical arguments to be made when you get down to it and when you really analyze things and so I wish everybody was put through that experience because it makes you think at a deeper level than most people really do in our society. So that’s how I went vegan.
Hope:
Okay, and you two were together at this point then because you said you weren’t vegan before. So you got together in college?
Paul:
Yeah. And Lenore really led the way on a lot of the early going vegetarian things in college. I actually was pretty resistant to it at first and I would actually have a lot of arguments with Lenore. And then I realized that she was winning all the arguments and that my standpoint didn’t really make much sense. So yeah, I went vegetarian in college, and then actually it was after college that I went vegan.
Lenore:
Yeah, I think when I went vegetarian, I was a little pushy in our relationship. We were having a lot of ethical debates and conversations and lucky for me, I was with Paul, who cared enough to be in the relationship to become vegetarian and go through with that. But I think when I went vegan, I was a little bit older and more mature and I took more of a mindset of explaining, “This is why I’m doing this.” And I was hopeful that we would be on the same page eventually. And then not many months after that, we were at that place and we did get on the same page.
Hope:
That’s great. Vegan love, I love it. And it’s great that you move through it together and were able to both come to that realization together. That’s wonderful. How did it come about that you started a farm animal sanctuary? Piedmont Farm Animal Refuge, where did that come from?
Lenore:
I had experience, starting in middle school, working with children with autism and other developmental disabilities. And that was the field that I was in through college and afterwards, and I really loved the work. I was really passionate about it. But I think it had been about six years since we’d been vegan and I was feeling like I wanted to do more for animals. And there were so many people out there just like us who do care very much about animals but were uneducated. I’m a very hands on person and working with people and working with non-human animals is very similar in a lot of respects.
I wanted to try to find work that would fit my personality and my passions that also furthered the cause for animals. I had never actually heard of a sanctuary before but I Googled around and Farm Sanctuary popped up and I started to learn about the sanctuary world. There were far fewer sanctuaries at the time I was Googling this than there are now. It is really wonderful that there’s so many more of them now. So that was really when I started to ponder and wonder how I could do this and how I could get there. And so while I was working with children, I started to do different internships, find local volunteering, and I worked on staff at a sanctuary for many years. Over the next five years or so, I was just getting as much hands on experience as I could to find out, do I really want to do this, but also, how do you do it? How do you run a nonprofit organization? All those things. And so after that five years period, I felt like I was in a position to start. You have to start at some point. There’s never enough that you can learn. I’m always constantly learning, but I felt like it was the time. And we just celebrated 10 years since we opened in March of this year.
Hope:
So now, fast forward 10 years and you and Paul have started something that’s very unique in the sanctuary world. Paul, you come from an architectural background, and I want to hear about what you’re calling Animal Centered Design. So can you give us an overview of what this is, Animal Centered Design, and why it’s important?
Paul:
Animal Centered Design is a design process that we’ve been working on here at the refuge where basically, the goal is to make a physical environment for the animals that really allows them to be themselves as much as we can understand that, and of course, to be as happy as possible. So it’s something I started working on in my studies at NC State University and the design school there, where I was in need of a final project, kind of a thesis project, for my studies, and it was right about the time the refuge was starting to need housing. They needed a chicken and turkey house and a goat and sheep barn. I was able to combine those two things and actually spent a lot of my time getting academic experience out here at the refuge actually building things. So that that was good for me at the end of a long, three and a half years of academia to be out and working with my hands and applying what I’ve learned.
The Animal Centered Design Process basically starts with learning as much as we can about a specific species of animal. So with the goat and sheep barn, which I did for my thesis project, I spent some time visiting goats and sheep and sketching them, walking around following them, seeing what life is like as a goat or a sheep and taking little notes about what they’re doing. Even how they munch on grass; little details like that interests me. So that’s part of the learning process. And then also looking at published research about animals too and animal psychology and behavior. Although some of the resources that I was able to find, are not really centered on the animals being as happy as possible. They were more about how can we profit the most from them?
Hope:
Yeah. And I think that’s where this is kind of born out of, right? Because most sanctuaries are kind of grandfathered in ex-farms or old farms. People get an old farm property or an old dairy property or whatever and they create a sanctuary but it still functions and looks like a farm as far as the buildings and that kind of thing. And farms weren’t designed for animals. They were designed to commodify animals and profit off animals. So it’s kind of a different feeling, right? So you’re trying to do something different with the space.
Paul:
That’s right. Yeah. And part of Animal Centered Design, is trying to create new, in architecture we call them, typologies. It’s basically like a type of building that says, “I take care of animals.” So right now, we have this typology of the barn with the gambrel roof that is a kind of a one-size-fits-all space for farm animals. When you come to the refuge, you’ll see that a lot of our structures might not be what you expect. And each structure is specific to a species or a group of species.
Hope:
Yeah, let’s go species by species and what each one needs that’s different. So who do you want to start with?
Paul:
We could start with goats.
Hope:
Okay.
Paul:
So after the research process with goats, for example, we tried to take three or four essential things we learned about goats that we could use as design inspiration for their structures. One of the things was that goats get a sense of safety from being in high places. If a goat is left to their own devices, they can kind of naturalize to mountainous areas, and they often sleep up on high outcroppings to get a sense of safety and actual physical safety too. So we take something like that that’s essential to goats and we turn it into the question, how do we make a space that can accommodate that?
So what we did with the interior of our goat houses is provide more vertical space than horizontal space. They have a series of bunk beds with jumping blocks to get up in between them that they use for napping and then also at nighttime. We close them all in at night to keep them safe. They all go up on these bunk beds and they have their own little spots that they like to be in. I think it gives them a sense of safety and a sense of fun.
Another piece for goats that we learned was that they like to eat grass and they like to browse trees. That’s actually an important part of their diet. And actually-
Hope:
I’m sorry, what was that word? Browse trees?
Paul:
Yeah. Browsing is basically just munching leaves and also bark. Especially in winter when there’s no leaves, they’ll eat a lot of bark off trees.
Hope:
Okay.
It’s actually a really important part of their digestion. So knowing that, helped us find where we want to site the goat barns. And so we did that right along the edge of the forest in the pasture, so that they would always have access to both. And especially that’s good for elderly animals that aren’t as mobile.
Hope:
So they don’t have to go as far to get to the trees to browse the trees.
Paul:
Yeah.
Hope:
I learned a new word.
Paul:
There’s browsing and grazing. Grazing is for grass and then browsing is for trees. Yeah.
Hope:
I love it. Okay. And what about the sheep because you said the goats and sheep are in the same area. But sheep are actually very different than goats, right?
Paul:
Yes. And actually, in terms of browsing and grazing, they actually need some browsing as well, but they tend to go a lot more just for grass.
Lenore:
Yeah, I think, technically, goats are 60% browsers and 40% and grazers and sheep are the opposite. Flip flopped.
Hope:
Okay.
Paul:
Yeah. So we sited their house next to the largest pasture that we had. So that’s part of Animal Centered Design too: tailoring the outdoor environment to what the animals may want if left to their own devices.
Lenore:
Yeah, and a lot of that might come from learning where they are native to, who are their ancestors, where were those animals living, what types of habitats or environments, and then that has really helped inform us in terms of where to place their houses on our particular piece of land.
Paul:
There’s also limitations to our land that we wish weren’t there like the fact that we have very little topography here. It is not exactly what goats and sheep like.
Hope:
And by topography, do you mean like, kind of sways and ebbs in the land? Like different levels?
Paul:
It’s pretty flat.
Hope:
Right.
Paul:
And sheep actually naturalized to areas with rolling hills.
Hope:
Right.
Paul:
Whereas goats like more mountainous areas.
Hope:
Yeah, and this is where it’s so interesting that, you know, we think of “free ranging” animals. There’s this movement towards free range. Free range and get the get the animals out of the confinement barns, right? But what they’re being put out on is just these flat open grass areas of nothing. And that’s not really natural to them either just like you’re saying. So it’s very interesting that people think that free ranging is, “Oh, all the animals are perfect now. It’s happy. Everything’s great.” But no, that’s not necessarily the best for them either.
Paul:
Exactly. Yeah. I have a dream of creating a goat mountain. We sometimes rent heavy equipment and I have a lot of fun using it. So I have a dream to create a goat mountain. Whenever we have a lot of material here from another project, we’re going to do that.
Hope:
Wow! Cool! You could also maybe have a climbing gym for humans right next to the goats. I don’t know. I’m having funny visions.
Paul:
Welcome to our world!
Hope:
Okay, yeah. So I know that the ancestry is important when we’re talking about chickens, because chickens’ ancestry is actually the red jungle fowl of Southeast Asia, and they’re used to a very dense foliage and levels and trees and branches and all of that. So they really aren’t meant to just be on flat grass. So tell us about the chickens.
Lenore:
The chicken outdoor area is something that we’ve been working on over the years to eventually turn into as much of a jungle environment as possible.
Hope:
Nice!
Lenore:
Because just like you said, these birds descended from a rainforest habitat.
Hope:
Yeah.
Lenore:
The red jungle fowl. So a lot of the ways we have done that is letting things grow up, not just mowing and cutting all the grass down. A lot of trees and bushes and things came up. In fact, a whole grove of native persimmons came up that we didn’t even know what they were for the first year or so. And so that has been one tactic we’ve taken.
Another is to very intentionally plant bushes and trees within their habitats and adding to it over the years as we can afford it and as we have time to make sure all these new plants are watered. We like to focus a lot on edibles because thinking about these animals in the wild and how they would be foraging and spending all this time looking for berries and things. So we have fig trees and jujube trees and we have some blueberries and some grape vines and so just trying to add interest in that way. It is really wonderful because some of some of the trees are already fruiting. There’s times of year when the chickens know that the fruit has fallen overnight and so when you let everybody out of their house in the morning, the first thing they do is they run to this particular tree and check to see what has fallen and then they’re like, “Okay, now I can come back and enjoy my breakfast,” but they just have to go check that tree first.
It’s really cool when you’re making this effort and you can’t ask them what they would prefer, but you’re trying to learn, based on all the information you can gather, and then when the animals use that space or react to it in the way that it was intended or in a positive way of any kind, that feels like a real win.
Hope:
Yeah. And have you done anything with the interior of the chickens’ housing? What that like?
Paul:
So for the chicken and the turkey house we had two kind of seemingly opposite design criteria. At night, we wanted the space to be built like a tank when it’s just an impenetrable fortress where no critters can get in there and harass the birds. But during the day, when there aren’t as many predators about, we wanted it to be as open as possible so that we can get beautiful cross ventilation, light, and air into the space because indoor air quality can be a big issue with birds. If you’ve ever been in any chicken houses or heavily populated birdhouses, they can kick up a lot of dust and the ammonia from their droppings can quickly create an unhealthy air quality. So having a lot of open air flow through there is super important during the daytime.
We reconciled those two competing design ideas by having these large doors that swing up and down so that when they’re open, it creates a big porch area all around the structure. There’s doors dotting all around the structure. And then when they’re closed, they swing down vertically, kind of like a mother hen’s wings coming down at night to protect the flock.
Lenore:
The doors are both the walls of the structure at night and then they become the roof of the porches during the day.
Hope:
Ah okay.
Paul:
I think also when these various doors are open, they create a sense of safety from predators above. To have that shelter from above, kind of like the forest canopy, gives them that same sense of safety. So we’re echoing that in a way.
Hope:
And then there’s other species of birds that are also farmed for food, that are very different from chickens and turkeys, and that’s waterfowl, ducks and geese. And usually they’re kept in the same way as chickens and turkeys, when they are being bred and raised and killed for food. But they have very different needs, waterfowl. So tell us about the ducks and geese.
Paul:
Yeah, so some of the things we learned about ducks and geese when we were doing our initial research, something that may seem obvious, is that they really like water.
Hope:
Yeah!
Paul:
Everything they do revolves around a body of water if they’re left to their own devices. And so we wanted to have their housing also revolve around that, so we set the structures just above the level of the ponds that we have for them. We dug a few ponds for them. And the structures extend like a large porch, out over the water so that the access is there and they are always right on that edge. When they’re in their housing, they’re on the edge of the water, because one thing we learned is if a predator does come, or somebody they see as a threat—
Hope:
—they hit the water. Yeah!
Paul:
Being able to go out on the water is a big deal for them. So that’s part of that sense of safety. Always feeling the presence of that water. Yeah.
Lenore:
Yeah, and I think, you know, Hope, having animals be safe is of course, everybody’s responsibility when you’re taking care of these animals. But a lot of what Paul also likes to think about is not only what makes them be safe, but what makes them feel safe. So even though our goats, for example, are closed in at night, and they could sleep on the ground and be totally safe from any kind of predator or threat, they all go up on their bunks because that’s what makes them feel safe. So trying to get into the mind of these animals and think about how they perceive the world. You know, they might not understand that they’re necessarily safe the way we would.
Paul:
Yeah, and I think that’s just a natural part of any animal that seeks shelter. Even when we think about our sense of home, going home, we want to feel safe and comforted.
Hope:
Yeah. I love that. I’m trying to envision this. So the duck house is where their inside space is just right up on the pond and they can just jump right in the pond from the house. Is that right?
Paul:
Yes, there’s a porch that kind of comes and extends out of their house over the water. And they use it as a kind of a diving board sometimes.
Hope:
I see. Okay, that’s great.
Lenore:
At the start of the day, everybody’s got to come out and jump in the pond with a bath. And then they’ll come back in for breakfast once it’s been laid out for them. They have their priorities in line.
Hope:
Yeah, that’s wonderful. So, of course, all this that we’ve been talking about requires a lot of resources and money and this is for, you know, kind of big picture sanctuary work. But last year, we did a series on the podcast featuring microsanctuaries and taking care of animals, particularly chickens, but other animals as well, in smaller spaces and more urban spaces. So I was wondering if there are some things that people can do kind of on a smaller scale or a smaller budget that still is Animal Centered Design?
Lenore:
Yeah, I think the concept itself could be applied to any kind of scale. And not necessarily just farmed animals, either. A lot of people have cats or dogs that they live with and you could learn more about them. For example, dogs love caves. So what kind of a cave environment could you set up in your house for a dog? Or if you have a small urban backyard, can you think about planting some blueberry bushes for your birds or for your chickens or don’t mow and just weed whack little paths, so that the grass gets really high. There are things that can cost nothing that you can do, but I think engaging in the process is really going down a path of learning about these animals and trying to unlearn some things that society just kind of tells us. We don’t really think critically about a lot of the animals that we share our lives with and what their ancestry is and what their preferences might be. So just starting to research and learn and observe is, I think, what it’s all about.
Hope:
Yeah, I love that because so often people think of farmed animals just as a herd of animals or a group of animals and not the individual and the needs of the individual. So this is really putting focus on that. On the needs of the individual animal and their emotional state, their desires to live a fulfilled and thriving and happy life. And so I just, I love this. I love this concept.
Paul:
Yeah, and we’re also really excited to see when any other sanctuaries or microsanctuaries have examples of Animal Centered Design. There’s another one right here in Pittsboro, Triangle Chicken Advocates, that’s done really great work with their outdoor areas for their birds as well.
Hope:
Yeah, definitely. That’s Alastor Van Kleeck. We do our chicken webinar together. The Humane Hoax Chicken Webinar is co-hosted and co-created by the Triangle Chicken Advocates and Alastor and myself. So yeah, they’re doing wonderful work as well. They’ve created a very forested, dense, interesting outdoor area for their chickens.
And we haven’t talked about the cows because that’s kind of new to you. You’re just getting cows this summer. What’s the cow space like?
Paul:
Cows, I feel, are the hardest to design a house for because we visited a number of other sanctuaries to see their cow spaces, and we never saw a single cow in any of their spaces. One of the things we’ve learned is that they don’t really like to be too enclosed because it can give them a sense of anxiety. And one thing we did learn was that they do use porch spaces. So spaces where you don’t have too much enclosure, but you do have some. We tried to make a space that has the right balance for cows of that enclosure and safety and then openness. And one thing that that we also learned is they like to have views from their spaces. They like a vista.
Lenore:
I remember one sanctuary I went to, the caregivers were telling us that this one particular cow loved to watch the sunset every night.
Hope:
Oh, I love that.
Paul:
So we tried to orient their space to maximize that and also allow that view of the sunset.
Hope:
So can you tell us about one of your residents? Give us a story of somebody.
Lenore:
So I’d like to tell the story of one of our first goat residents, Sweet Mama. Sweet Mama and her two kids were the first goats that arrived at the refuge. And she had been used on a dairy farm in the mountains of North Carolina for years and years and years. And her body had worn down and she was sent to the slaughter market. And instead of her story ending there, like it does for so many other animals, she managed to escape this facility. Jumping fences, she ran across a road and ended up on a nearby farm that had cows. And luckily, this very kind woman was feeding a colony of feral cats who lived on this farm and was regularly going out there for this purpose and stumbled upon this poor goat. The goat was skinny and could barely walk. And this woman took it upon herself to start bringing food for this goat. And about two weeks into this, she arrived with the food for Sweet Mama and the cats to find Sweet Mama in the middle of giving birth to two kids. So she had actually been pregnant when she was sent to that slaughter market. But at that point, the person that owned this farm said, “Well, that’s a little bit too many too many goats on the property.” And so this woman really wanted to find a place where the family could stay together. The kids were really little. They were nursing at that point. And it was perfect timing because we had just finished building our goat houses. So they arrived as a family and it was the first time that Sweet Mama ever got to nurse kids, to raise them, and to actually keep her family. And so she lived for the last years of her life at the refuge with us and with her two children, Ace and Ivy. And she’s passed away now from complications due to a goat disease that is really prevalent in the dairy industry called CAE, which causes really debilitating arthritis. But Ace and Ivy are still here and they’re her legacy. And, you know, her presence and her energy is still at the sanctuary. I feel it all the time. She’s one of my personal heroes. I think she’s just one of the best moms possible.
Hope:
Wow, what an incredible story. And many people don’t realize that a lot of the animals that are sent to slaughter, are pregnant! They’re pregnant moms. It’s just horrible. And that she was considered old and spent but yet she had the wherewithal and the power to jump fences and get herself out of there, knowing that she was in a bad place. And then to be able to, for the first time ever, have her babies stay with her, because for many years, her babies were taken from her.
Lenore:
That’s right.
Hope:
Wow, what a beautiful story.
Lenore:
She had a real strong fighter mentality. We like to joke around with our vet. She’s the only goat that’s ever bitten our vet. She was going to stand up for herself. And she was going to protect those kids. It’s just amazing.
Hope:
Wow. Incredible. I love that story. That’s great. Well, it’s been really wonderful talking to both of you. You’re doing such incredible work. Thank you for being part of that and for bringing about this incredible new concept of Animal Centered Design. What a cool thing. I’m sure that it’s going to pick up and take off. Sanctuaries may look very different in the future and that’s all thanks to you. So thank you very much for being on the podcast.
Lenore:
Thanks for having us.
Paul:
It’s been a pleasure. Thanks, Hope.
Thank you for listening to the Hope for the Animals Podcast, sponsored by Compassionate Living. So I wanted to let you all know that Cogen and I, Cogen is my husband and he’s been on the podcast a couple of times, we will be featured at the online Compassion Consortium in their Compassionate Action segment. The Compassion Consortium is an online gathering, a once a month, online gathering for spiritually minded vegans and pre-vegans. It’s loosely spiritual. All denominations are welcome. Non-denominational is welcome.
And the Compassionate Action segment is just this short bit after the main speaker. And in that section, I will be talking about my new online class that I’ll be teaching in the fall at a Jain college. I announced it a couple of episodes ago. My class is called, “Ahimsa, Animal Advocacy and Veganism.” Ahimsa is a Sanskrit word meaning non-violence, and it’s the Jain religion’s main principle. Their most important focus is ahimsa. The Jain college that I will be teaching at is called Arihanta Academy.
And actually, my next guest on the podcast will be Dr. Christopher Miller, who was the co-founder of Arihanta Academy and he teaches there as well. And he’s a vegan activist in the Jain community. So we’ll be talking all about this more about this on the next episode. But if you’d like to join Cogen and I for the Compassion Consortium, it will be the last Sunday of August, and I’ll put a link in the show notes.
I do hope that if you are listening on a podcast app, that you’ll scroll down to those ratings and give us a five star rating and if you have a moment, write a review. This helps to bump us up in the algorithms so we can reach more listeners with our compassionate message. And I so love seeing the reviews. It’s just a sweet boost of good energy that helps me to keep this podcast going. So thank you for your support. I really appreciate you helping to spread the word any way that you can.
I really hope you enjoy the last few weeks of summer. And please live vegan.
