by Clare Druce
Not really, not if you do the maths. 21 days + 16 (remember, it took sixteen days for all the ducklings to overcome their eye ‘problems’) = 37, and 37 days is not so far off a commercially reared duck’s entire lifespan (rather than the twenty years on offer to a normal, healthy duck).
Incidentally, I looked up ‘emotive’ in my dictionary, just to check. ‘Arousing emotion’ was the definition. Perhaps more emotion is called for, not less.
I was disturbed by Professor Dawkins’ mention of further research to establish how infrequently shower facilities might be made available. In my mind it raised the spectre of rush hour situations at shower time, with thousands of ducks wanting the same thing, all at the same time.
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In September 2009 Poultry World reported: ‘Animal welfare bodies have in recent years piled the pressure on retailers and the UK duck industry to give indoor-reared birds access to open water.’ PW added that over the past five years Cherry Valley had been working on a design for an open sided veranda system, to include deep troughs in which birds can ‘preen, paddle and wade’, as well as enjoy daylight and fresh air. Professor Dawkins’ research was conducted during a similar period.
In the same issue of Poultry World, ducks with access to water in a Cherry Valley veranda system are shown. No doubt they’re much happier for not being totally enclosed in windowless sheds with shallow troughs or nipple drinkers for water, but it has to be said these ducks looked far from clean. In fact their feathers were badly soiled.
According to information in the article (nine rearing sheds housing 75,000 ducks) the farmer in question keeps his ducks in flocks of about eight thousand per shed. So it’s factory farming all right, but with some improvements.
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‘Cherry Valley is now in the process of getting Freedom Food accreditation for its system…Freedom Foods [sic] have been active advisers from the start of the development of the system’ (10). So says Cherry Valley’s agricultural operations manager, Brian Kenyon.
While it cannot be denied that the Freedom Food scheme aims to alleviate some of the suffering of intensively reared farmed animals, the scheme will surely serve to validate those systems. The danger, as we in Chickens’ Lib and many others see it, is that consumers may pick up a duck bearing a label displaying the hugely reassuring letters RSPCA coupled with the Freedom Food logo, believing that the bird they plan to eat has been truly free. Unless the label makes it clear that the large ‘duck’ they’re wheeling over to the checkout is in fact a duckling, slaughtered at eight or nine weeks, who probably lived in a shed (with a veranda tacked on), forever jostling for space with anything up to ten thousand others, how will consumers know? Labels and logos are powerful things, yet they rarely tell anything like the whole story.
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June 17th 2010: I phoned Cherry Valley, and left a message saying it related to the company’s present slaughter methods. I wanted to know if Cherry Valley had advanced to using gas (so obviating the need to hang live birds in shackles) – or was the electrified water bath method still in operation?
Later that day a spokesman for Cherry Valley phoned me back, and it was bad news. The company doesn’t use gas. I asked about the mA level employed in the electrified water bath, and the figure of 130mA was given. I expressed concern, and quoted the research at Bristol, going back some twenty years, that had assessed the need for 250 mA for ducks, while warning that even at that high level some might fail to receive a stun sufficient to ensure unconsciousness at the neck cutting stage.The same representative from Cherry Valley phoned back half an hour later to apologise. He had misinformed me – he’d now spoken to colleagues and the figures he’d given me were incorrect: a device at Cherry Valley to record the mAs passing through ducks on the slaughter line was checked regularly, and levels ranging from 199mA to 258mA were shown to have been those most recently in use.
I mentioned the matter of ducks raising their heads, so missing the water bath altogether, and my informant was at pains to emphasise how Cherry Valley takes great trouble to get the birds ‘properly settled’ while shackled, by means of dim lighting etc. He assured me there was always a veterinary officer present from the Meat Hygiene Service/ Food Standards Agency and that all officials on duty were ‘very, very keen’ to ensure that slaughter was carried out humanely.
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Despite research indicating the extreme pain suffered by shackled poultry (11), the vast majority of ducks are still hung in shackles at slaughter. It’s impossible to say how many ducks feel ‘properly settled’ when in such a painful and terrifying situation, but my guess is that those who do are few and far between.
The world’s largest flightless bird
1990 saw an Oxfordshire couple about to turn their dream into reality. Linda and Francis Ayres, of Hangland Farm, near Banbury, had connections in Namibia. They’d seen ostrich farming there, and wanted to introduce it to the UK.
First, they purchased five young ostriches from a British wildlife park, then two more from a zoological collection. In 1991, sixty hatching eggs were imported from Namibia, probably making the first serious attempt to farm ostriches in Europe (1). Soon the Ayres were giving promotional seminars on ostrich farming, and would-be ostrich farmers flocked to hear them.
Ostriches have been farmed in Africa for well over a hundred years and more recently in other countries too – notably the USA, Canada, Israel and Australia – but the Ayres’ ambition marked the first exploitation in Britain of a species that truly belongs in the wide-open spaces of the African plains.
The Ayres’ promotional leaflet promised that by 1992 they’d be ready to supply 3-to-6-month-old chicks ‘anywhere in the world.’ Already they were importing chicks and operating the only quarantine station in the UK. They estimated the 1991 worth of an ostrich slaughtered at 14 months to be between £500 and £550, while a breeding hen, assuming 25 offspring reared annually, would bring in £10,000 per annum.
The Ayres were talking big money.
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November 1991: Chickens’ Lib and Compassion in World Farming joined forces, producing a fact sheet expressing their concerns for ostrich welfare. Our two organisations also issued a Press Release to coincide with the Ayres’ first seminar at Hangland Farm. We stated our fear that ostriches could soon be subjected to the horrors of intensive farming, long-distance transport and cruel slaughter.
Francis Ayres remained sanguine however, telling The Times’ agricultural correspondent that since ostriches have been domesticated for more than 100 years in Africa there should be no greater welfare problems involved than those encountered when rearing cattle, pigs and sheep, while MAFF informed The Times’ journalist that it had not yet licensed ostrich meat but had it in mind to classify it as ‘farmed game’.
By 1991 ostrich farming in Britain was in effect at the experimental stage, untried and untested, yet about to take off in a flurry of ill-founded optimism.
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Ostriches don’t only supply meat, leather and feathers. Every part of the bird can be turned into something: brooches and earrings from claws, ashtray stands from legs and feet… even those long necks have been hardened and turned into spaghetti jars.
Promises of fabulous profits were bandied about in this new industry, as virgin ostrich farmers jumped eagerly onto the bandwagon. When a booklet on ostrich farming was published by the Ostrich Farming Corporation Limited (OFC) based near Newark, £ signs floated in a clear blue sky above the ostriches pictured on the cover. And that said it all: ostriches promised rich pickings.
The OFC was soon in trouble, though. On April 14th 1996 The Observer reported its demise: ‘As the Serious Fraud Office was called in to investigate the Ostrich Farming Corporation last week, it became clear the debacle has not deterred other companies offering investment in ostriches – or many potential investors. Last week, half a dozen firms continued to advertise ostrich schemes, some with similar claims to those made by OFC, which is being wound up by the Department of
Trade and Industry.’
Poultry World of January 1991 remained enthusiastic, informing its readers that ostriches can ‘…reach a marketable live weight of 300 lbs of which 80lbs is prime breast meat…In the USA which is the source of most of the Ayres’s commercial knowledge, breeding birds operate in threes, with one male serving two females – one mature bird and one youngster. But this cosy ménage à trois could be threatened by work on artificial insemination now getting underway in the USA.’
In the same article, PW emphasised the dangers of dealing with these huge birds: ‘It means that egg collection is very hazardous and we have heard of an American farmer who protects himself with a portable shed on his daily rounds’.
Ostriches must be licensed under the Dangerous Wild Animals Act 1976; Dr Brian Bertram, Director of Slimbridge Wildfowl Trust warned that a kick from an ostrich could cause horrible, even fatal, injuries.
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The ostrich, the world’s largest flightless bird, has a lifespan and a reproductive time-scale not unlike that of humans; the females remain fertile till around forty, the males for much longer, and both sexes can live to be around eighty years old. The males perform elaborate mating dances, to attract the chosen female. Although not monogamous, the male will choose a ‘major’ hen as his wife. Ostriches are dedicated parents, sharing the task of incubating the eggs. The plumage of the male is black and he takes the night shift, the mid-brown feathers of the female providing better camouflage during the day.
Ostriches can grow to be eight feet tall, and run for long periods at speeds of 40 mph. They form extended family groups to care for their young, who remain dependent for around a year. Ostriches graze, mainly on seeds, buds, flowers and grasses. They have excellent vision, vital for detecting predators at a distance. Long eyelashes protect their large eyes from damage from dust and sandstorms.
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And on UK farms? Ostriches are confined in barren paddocks. Hangland Farm’s 1991 leaflet advised a half-acre paddock for a breeding pair, but explained that what they called ‘the commercial offspring’ (i.e. those reared to be killed for meat) could be more closely stocked. The British Domesticated Ostrich Association’s suggested stocking density was slightly less generous than the Ayres’, suggesting that one third to a half-acre per breeding pair would suffice.
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The Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC) in its August 1993 ‘Guidelines on the Welfare of Farmed Ostriches’ stated: ‘Without an adult ostrich being present, young chicks will congregate and remain inactive so they need to move around, otherwise they can develop leg problems.’ FAWC added that staff looking after the chicks should visit them ‘several times a day’ and encourage them to ‘exercise and play’. This demanding regime rang hollow to us, and probably to ostrich farmers too.
High mortality among ostrich chicks was soon a worry at the Ayres’ farm, despite it being the showpiece of the emerging UK industry. In 1993 a 33% mortality rate was recorded on a batch of 60 chicks under three months old, despite them being supervised for most of the day and even given baby-safe toys to play with (2).
Contrast this with a description taken from a South African publication describing ostriches farmed in a natural environment: ‘On good veldt, which is not subject to overstocking and where the birds are left to fend for themselves, they are always healthy and vigorous, their eggs are practically all fertile and their chicks a picture of vitality.’(3)
Orphaned ostrich chicks, as on the sort of farms being proposed for the UK, are vulnerable: ‘Farmed chicks, for example, required exercising 10 times a day, and also needed a “mother figure”. Those deprived of a surrogate mother might eat anything, leading to cases of stone or grass impaction.’(4) With no parents to guide them, and barren paddocks or concrete-floored sheds for a home, it’s no wonder that ostrich chicks are prone to stress-related behaviour.
In March 1996 an international conference was held in Manchester, England, entitled Improving our Understanding of Ratites in a Farming Environment. A grim picture emerged of the health problems suffered by ostriches (5).
Rebecca Pridaux, a vet attached to a practice specialising in ostriches, informed conference delegates that impaction, when food particles or ‘foreign bodies’ can’t get past the gizzard and into the duodenum, was proving common in farmed ostriches, and especially in chicks. She went on to warn against leaving dangerous objects lying around in ostriches’ living quarters (syringes was one example!) and ended on a depressing note, stating that some ostriches will impact on any type of bedding. One way around the problem, she advised, would be to keep the birds on concrete, or some other artificial flooring, and inside all winter long, especially in northern Europe (6).
According to one American ‘expert’, the recommended non-surgical method for removing life-threatening objects involved flushing out the impacted object/s with the help of a stomach tube, water and a garden hose, the bird meanwhile held upside down by the legs (7). Clearly, turkey pellets laced with antibiotics (the approved feed in the 1990s), along with an inadvertent sprinkling of non-food objects, was hardly providing the chicks with a substitute for the mixed vegetation suited to their digestive systems, and the presence of parents to teach them what to eat.
Delegates from the UK told of distorted legs, dislocations, gastro-intestinal tract disorders leading to 30% mortality, and more (8).
In the USA, adenovirus had struck ten farms in Oklahoma, killing 90-100% of ostriches under two months old. Impactions, secondary bacterial infections and pneumonia were among other conditions mentioned (9).
Australia’s spokesman told of ‘ostrich fading syndrome’ (OFS) among imported ostriches on farms in four states. Symptoms included anorexia, malaise and an abnormal neck carriage (S shaped necks). Out of 2191chicks hatched on the Cocos Island Quarantine Station from eggs imported from Zimbabwe, 1096 died on the island, but no consistent cause of death was found. In late January 1995, surviving chicks were transported by air and road to mainland distribution farms, but many arrived weak, stunted and emaciated, some showing feather loss. On six Victorian farms mortality had averaged 75% (10).
At around this time, the German Federal Association of Veterinary Surgeons was calling for a ban on ostrich farming in their country. A survey had indicated that only 29% of German ostrich farms were operating to acceptable welfare standards.
Faults found included ‘bad housing conditions, injuries amongst the birds, the wrong feeding programmes and careless management procedure’ (11). However, the above Association’s views didn’t prevail. A paper published in 2007 made it clear that ostrich farming still goes on in Germany, though it ‘continues to be a controversial subject with regard to the aspect of animal protection’ (12).
We urged MAFF to follow Germany’s call for a ban, but in a letter dated Feb 22nd 1996 MAFF admitted to having no records of the whereabouts of UK ostrich farms – such information, we were told, would be kept by County/District Councils. So no hope of a survey even, let alone condemnation of this new form of factory farming.
Our concern deepened when a leading ostrich vet told Chickens’ Lib that some ostrich farmers were keeping their birds indoors for most or all of the year, despite FAWC’s recommendation that ostriches older than three months should not be confined indoors for more than brief periods.
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June 1995: Forty-two ostriches out of a group of 104 died. The plan had been to export these birds, each worth £5000, from the UK to North America. Veterinary Record reported that the birds had been kept permanently indoors, on a concentrate diet found to include ‘a very heavy dose of the growth promoter monensin’, a drug highly toxic to ostriches (13). This incident illustrates the lack of knowledge and care apparent in many entrepreneurs and further justified our fears that ostrich farming would intensify into true factory farming.
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July 1995: Twenty ostriches (out of a consignment of 107) died en route from Devon to Manchester Airport, destination New Zealand. Craig Culley, sp
okesman for the British Domesticated Ostrich Association, expressed himself ‘astonished’ by the deaths.
A major article appeared in Veterinary Record in which the stresses imposed on adult ostriches during handling, loading, transportation and unloading were assessed. Care had been taken to accustom birds to handling, in order to minimise stresses on the day of the journey. (Birds not the subject of a survey, and therefore unaccustomed to pre-transport handling, may well have fared much worse.) Despite the pre-handling, approximately 60% of the ostriches slipped and 40% fell while being handled and loaded. The researchers concluded: ‘The handling and loading of ostriches therefore constitute a serious problem involving hazard to the birds and to their handlers…The mortality and traumatic injuries sustained by the ostriches during all the procedures agreed with earlier reports, and confirmed that ostriches are very vulnerable to injuries, particularly in the neck and lower limbs (Foggin 1992, Wotton and Hewitt 1999, Minka 2003)…The fact that more injuries were sustained during handling than during the other procedures demonstrated that handling is the most stressful and risky procedure to the ostriches.’ (14)
During the thirteen years between the near-20% loss of ostrich life on the 1995 Devon to Manchester Airport journey and this 2008 survey, thousands of birds must have suffered at the hands of ostrich farmers, many of them complete amateurs. Picture the terrified birds, taller than the humans attempting to load them onto transport lorries, kicking out, slipping and falling in terror, their long legs and necks vulnerable to damage, pitting their considerable strength against that of the men struggling to control them.
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We didn’t have much scope for investigating the ostrich industry. Certainly there was no question of keeping a few, for study purposes. But we managed some good publicity, based on images obtained first-hand. Irene and I attended the Royal Show at Stoneleigh in Warwickshire and were able to take photos of delightful ostrich chicks, later to feature in our booklet Today’s Poultry Industry. We also visited the Great Yorkshire Show in Harrogate, an annual event popular with farmers and public alike. There we took photos of a penned-up female adult ostrich, peering down at the crowds from her great height. That photo turned out well too, and we put it on a postcard bearing the caption The Latest Victim.