Advice? How long to keep a broody w/ chicks separate...

[chickenannie]

We have been discussing more strategies for the horse situation -- i.e. how to sit down again with the neighbors and talk to them about it very seriously. We have also fed them ourselves on occasion. By the way, when I say erratically, that would be once a week or twice a week. So the horses do get some food, but it's just not enough to keep them from being very thin. I wouldn't take the SPCA phone call option off the table though.

 

[Beekissed]

The last time I was over at her place she was telling me about some folks down the road who weren't feeding their cattle and the neighbors were feeding them. Said the humane society got a call and these people aren't able to keep animals for 8 years on their farm. I asked if the animals were thin or malnourished looking? She just gave me a look and a smirk. I think she is the one who called it in on them. She said that is why she is trying to keep hay to her cows this year, so the neighbors can't say she isn't feeding. The first year she had them she fed them nothing and they had no water source. She said they could eat all the multiflora rose on the farm for feed. The cows were drinking their own urine out of their tracks by summer. They survived! I don't know how.

I feel the reason the old cow died is dehydration. She couldn't walk far enough to get to water or the food at the other end of the pasture.

She adopts all the blind horses and dogs and "fosters" dogs for the shelter, so they aren't going to do anything to her. I don't want to get her in trouble but she doesn't need these animals at all. They have no barn or shelter for any of these animals except a small coup for the 50 or so chickens and turkeys. When they were chicks they were in an over crowded box. The lamp got knocked down in the box somehow and some of the chicks got burned to death! She just hatched out more and is ordering more from MM in May. She finally took the bottle fed lambs (6) off her porch and put them in a horse trailer. Every time I hear one of her stories I just want to hit something. I'm no bleeding heart by any means, but I don't believe in torturing animals for any reason. Even under the guise of "loving them too much" to ease their suffering.