Our first few weeks volunteering at the animal sanctuary involved preparing food and cleaning which meant the only animals we were actually working with were the chickens and roosters – some of which had black belts in karate. Craig was attacked twice by two different roosters, the first attack was by Winter who was the most notorious rooster and known by everyone. He had a distinctive look as he was a white silkie breed with a red face and a bizarre mop of feathers atop his head. He was an absolute psychopath. The second attack was by Keith who jumped a meter high and slam-dunked Craig’s thigh, creating big puncture wounds from it’s nasty talons. Another volunteer got a really nasty peck on her hand by Winter that swelled up badly and became infected and as for my accidents, well, I had a lot of clumsy moments from walking into a low-lying tree to getting tangled up in a fence where the wire nearly cut into my leg and then I touched the electric part and got zapped. But for my pièce de résistance I fearfully entered the chicken coop one day with a heavy bucket of food, eyes on Winter the whole time. He was approaching fast though so I took a detour and completely tripped over a piece of metal and face-planted the floor. The bucket of food splatted next to me and as you can imagine within a split second I had 100 chickens on-top of me. Luckily I didn’t do any serious damage but
my shins and dignity were badly bruised whilst Winter smirked nearby.

So we spoke to our hosts and said we came to work with animals…not just the crazy chickens and we were allowed to take charge of the feed run for our final week and this is what our days looked like:

7:30am: After opening all the rooster cages and feeding the cats we had to go inside the chicken coop to feed them – home to around 100 hens, a few roosters, a couple of geese, turkeys and peacocks. The most chickens I’ve ever been around is 17 so this was very intimidating and the chooks totally swarmed us as we stepped in. Once those jobs were done we had our breakfast.

8:30am -11:30am: First we needed to prepare food buckets for the horses and ponies, but it wasn’t that simple because none of the animals were in the right fields. The fences were knackered around the sanctuary and some animals confidently charged over them and entered other fields. The cows hang out with the horses but two of them steal all the food so we needed to escort them into an enclosure and give them their buckets. Once we opened the gates we had to hope that all the horses and ponies headed to the right place otherwise there was a lot of bribing with hay to get them there. Every day was different depending on where the animals were and sometimes it didn’t go to plan but I enjoyed the challenge of figuring out the best method each day.

The next step was feeding the alpacas, sheep, goats and calf who all live in the round pen. The sheep were very boisterous and tried ramming their head into our buckets to get first dibs. The alpacas were lovely and chilled though, ever so elegant with their long necks. Now we needed to feed Sunny the 4 month old calf and stand on guard the whole time so the sheep didn’t steal his food. I adored Sunny, he was a classic white and black cow, but with the dairy industry being female orientated he was destined to be killed so now he’s living happily on the sanctuary. He had a lot of health issues though, I can’t remember the name but bacteria travelled through the umbilical cord and has caused him major joint issues. He was an absolute cutie and I loved feeding him apples and watermelons and watching him get the zoomies. Sometimes if I laid down to stroke him he’d put his head down on my arm and we’d have a little cuddle.

Once all the animals had eaten we let out the humongous pigs to free roam. When it was time to put them back in the pen we just shouted their names and they suddenly start charging towards us, ears flapping up and down and belly swinging from side to side.

3:00-5:00pm: The second feed run of the day happened in the afternoon but instead of buckets the animals get hay. It’s a lot easier than the morning run and then we have to go into the chicken pen to give them seeds and pray we can go a day without being attacked by one of them.

After the days work was done we’d then need to go back out to lock all the rooster cages and if it was raining we’d need to enter the chicken pen and move any chickens who were stupidly sleeping outside into a covered area.

I got to know a few of the horses and put ropes around their necks to guide them to different fields which was very intimidating the first time but it felt amazing doing it more and gaining confidence.

I’ve shared a few negatives in these two posts about our experience at the sanctuary which isn’t really fair because now we look back at our time we did enjoy ourselves and loved the location. There was a mix of pastures and bushland on the 650 acres and around the house were a scattering of short trees and I absolutely loved it when the sun was low and beamed through the forest, making the lush grass glow and creating shadows from all the twisted branches. Horses would casually stroll through this area and it really looked like a scene from a movie.

We spent the first two weeks living in the house and the final two in a caravan set in a field where the alpacas, horse and kangaroos were our neighbours – we loved it! We could escape the noise of the house which consisted of constant dogs barking, people talking and a few cockerels who temporarily lived inside while they had medical conditions treated. The caravan didn’t have any electricity or water but it was perfect for us and we really enjoyed the animals poking their head in the door to see what we were up to and the kangaroos were always grazing and hopping about throughout the day. We even saw four wild emus at the far end of the field one day, I couldn’t figure out what they were as they were huge and moving in a strange manner. They made the most bizarre thumping noise like they had a drum in their stomach. Their presence also spooked the horses and ponies causing them to escape the paddock in the middle of the night. It meant we were awoken in the caravan to a loud stampede of horses galloping precariously close to us and then proceeding to use the caravan as a scratching post which had us rocking from side to side.

The trees around the house were full of pink and grey cockatoos and ringneck parrots. I loved photographing them all, especially at dawn and dusk. On our days off we’d take different strolls around the land, we had to be careful not to get lost as the bushland all looked the same. We came across a stream on one of our walks, the water was clear but with an orange tinge and we decided it would be a good opportunity to have a little wash in the water seeing as showers were so limited. Weirdly the water tasted salty which I thought was odd as we were so far from the sea but I didn’t think too much of it until Craig hopped back over the creek to leave and spotted a decomposing kangaroo just 3 meters up stream from where we dipped and then I started having a horrible feeling that the water was salty because of the dead roo.

One thing we’ll really miss about the sanctuary is Loki the maremma dog. He was the only animal on the sanctuary that wasn’t rescued and was bought as a puppy. The breed are natural guard dogs and apparently the day they brought him home he just sat at the terrace and soaked in the landscape as if to say “this is my responsibility now”. He hasn’t been trained at all yet he knows to guard the animals, it’s just in his genes. Every night he’s on watch, protecting the animals from foxes and in the day time he’s protecting the house from any animals that get too close – usually the pigs and horses. He just needs to bark a couple of times and they scurry away. He adored strokes and cuddles and would swipe my leg with his giant paw when he wanted more attention. One of our jobs was tearing up donated rotisserie chicken for the dogs and cats to eat. The whole time I’d be tearing it I’d have cats all around me wanting to get some free tasters. One black cat would constantly tap his little paw on my hand and Rex the chihuahua-corgi cross would yap incessantly, but Loki was different. He’d just silently sit there, never acting on his temptations and I just adored that behaviour so you bet he was the only one who I gave extra chicken to.

Every evening Loki would sit on the terrace to watch the sun go down and just stare out at the view, just like he’d done as a puppy. It really felt like he was a special dog, like an ancestors spirit was within him. Sometimes we’d head out for a walk on the land and he’d follow us. He was never on lead so occasionally he’d just vanish and an hour later we’d hear the jingling of his tag around his collar. Apparently the neighbour who lives quite far away told our host that Loki visited his house every night to see his girlfriend but she passed away at some point and he just stopped visiting. It was such a sad story, maybe that’s why he stares off into the sunset every night, thinking of her.