Considering Dinner and Life
A variety of characters inhabit Tamerlaine Farm Animal Sanctuary in Montague. Co-founders Gabrielle Stubbert and Peter Nussbaum would like to introduce you. Healthier aging and climate could result.
If you plan on eating chicken tonight, you might be interested to know that your meal lived a fast life, from chick to hen, then dead, all in two months, housed with 20,000 other chickens in a 40’ x 40’ warehouse. They are genetically engineered for speedy, fat maturity to be profitable, since farmers get only a dollar per chicken, said Gabrielle Stubbert, co-owner of Tamerlaine Farm Animal Sanctuary in Montague, NJ.
Chickens get comfy accommodations at Tamerlaine. They run around in the yard, watch TV with Stubbert and her husband Peter, or, as on a recent frigid day, gather under a heat lamp in the barn, as visitors commune with them, along with goats, cows, bulls and pigs.
Three pigs greeted Nussbaum and several visitors as they entered the tidy, spacious barn, one of several on the 336 acre, 150-year-old farm, of which Stubbert and Nusssbaum are only the third owners. The previous owner ran a winery, but Stubbert and Nussbaum have accumulated 240 animals. Each arrived on its own path.
The couple can’t save all doomed creatures, but they conduct tours of the farm several days a week that they hope will convey the sociable, intelligent, feeling nature of animals who are treated callously in the farming industry that, Huppert notes, is the second largest source of greenhouse gases contributing to climate change. Industrial farms also add significantly to deforestation and lack of crop diversity, diverting land use that could feed people. Instead, industrial farms raise animals with short, miserable lives.
Stubbert and Nussbaum are vegans but don’t expect everyone to be.
“If people would just reduce their meat consumption to twice a week, that would make a big difference,” said Stubbert.
Not only would minimizing meat protein consumption reduce greenhouse gases, it can also lengthen healthy lives. Recent studies have shown that people whose protein sources are largely from vegetables rather than meat tend to be healthier and less frail as they age.
Two roosters were the first Tamerlaine refugees. Not useful for laying eggs, too skinny for meat, 260 million roosters per year become chicken meal, ground up alive, Stubbert said. She and Nussbaum adopted two roosters from a friend’s animal sanctuary after they bought their first farm on River Rd. in Montague, originally as a weekend house. Nussbaum is an attorney, handling intellectual property, and Stubbert was in a band when they met at a New York City club.
“Roosters are very social. They tap on the door, wanting to come in. They nap on the couch with my husband,” Stubbert said. “And they’re funny,” teasing each other by running off with each other’s toys. Chicken diapers prevent them from leaving a trail of droppings in the house, she said.
The couple’s love of roosters led to more chicken rescues. Chickens often fall off trucks and are left to die.
Stubbert had hoped to continue eating eggs after swearing off meat, but changed her mind when she learned about the lives of egg layers, some of whom have come to live at Tamerlaine. Bred to be small and lay large eggs, on factory farms the white egg laying Leghorn and brown egg laying Red Star chickens’ cages are only cleaned every two years, when the occupants are slaughtered, Stubbert said.
“The barn smell will knock you down on the ground. Your lungs are burned by feces and ammonia fumes,” she said of those farms.
Factory farm hens lay 340 eggs per year, a result of genetic modification, without which they would lay one or two dozen, Stubbert said. After two years they are “spent,” no longer producing, and slaughtered.
“They’re killed in horrific ways—with foam, their air cut off, or buried alive,” she said. “Turkeys grow to 14 to 16 pounds in six to eight weeks. They can barely walk.”
Goats, pigs, cows, sheep, peacocks and donkeys have also come to Tamerlaine in various ways, as the couple made Tamerlaine a nonprofit and found a grant that helped pay for their purchase of the 366 acre farm on Clove Rd., next to their original farm, with only a strip of woods between them.
“Pigs are bred to get big quick, and cows are bred to produce lots of milk,” Stubbert said.
To produce milk, the cows must have calves, who are separated from mothers, left bellowing long and plaintively. Cows are then milked by machines.
“Cows have five babies in five years, and then, considered “spent,”they’re butchered and eaten, said Stubbert.
Wandering in the barnyard on a recent day was Harold, who had been destined to become beef for a homestead farmer, but at 3 months old he had escaped to the Lebanon, New Jersey woods.
“Cattle are herd animals,” said Stubbert. Harold broke through a fence to join a herd of horses, but evaded capture for three months. Then one night Harold slept in the horse pen and was caught. The horse owner called Stubbert, who agreed to take the young bull if the owners signed him over, which they did. On a recent day, he could be seen drinking from the fountain that prevented water from freezing.
Another path to Tamerlaine was cleared after a pig was brought up by a student in a Rutgers animal husbandry class. When she discovered that her piglet, Pecan, was headed for auction, the student was horrified and begged to save him, but no mercy was allowed. However, she arranged for Tamerlaine to find Pecan at the livestock auction, for which he was marked to be identifiable. No need. When he heard his name called, he leapt over the crowd of pigs around him and greeted his rescuer.
“They’re terrified,” said Stubbert, of the animals put in large gatherings headed for their demise.
Elsewhere, a goat at a New York City live market riveted the attention of a visitor in a farm animal support group. They visit these live markets to “bear witness,” Stubbert said. She described the markets as the size of a small cafe, with a table in the middle, where animals are slaughtered one by one as the others watch.
One goat was so demonstrative in his affection with a volunteer “bearing witness,” that she declared her intention to save the goat and threatened to bring animal rights demonstrations there daily if the shop owner failed to give up the goat. Sheldon, the goat, now lives at Tamerlaine.
Tamerlaine will host Compassion Camp for children daily July 22 to 26, offering “animal meet-and greets,” as well as hiking, workshops, outdoor games, arts and crafts, cooking, yoga and presentations on nature and conservation.
In the fall, said Stubbert, “Flocktober is our largest annual event. We turn the entire sanctuary into a giant vegan beer garden,” with kids’ activities and unlimited vegan food.
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