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Dear John,
It will be winter at Farm Sanctuary before we know it, and our team is working hard to prepare for whatever lies ahead.
We could really use your help. Recent winters have been unpredictable, and we’re readying ourselves for the worst—checking water lines so they don’t freeze, checking barn doors and windows to be sure all close properly, inspecting supplemental indoor heaters and water units, and more. With animals’ safety on the line, we need to be prepared.
Completing these vital projects before the bad weather hits will require more than $169,000 in immediate funds.
Help us ready our shelters for winter and continue all of our work for farm animals by joining Farm Sanctuary through a donation to our Winter Farm Maintenance Fund.
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Our animal residents depend on us for food, shelter, warmth, and care, all of which are more difficult in the winter. Without grass to graze, animals like Milton steer need hay—and the colder it is outside, the more they must eat to stay warm. The bad news is that hay prices have gone up—which means our hay budget will exceed $75,000 this winter!
Stocking up on hay is just the beginning of how we’re preparing for temperatures that could dip below zero for days on end. Outdoors, we’re closing down far away pastures, setting up plow markers, and trying to identify any areas that could become icy. Animals can slip, too—especially those like Reuben sheep, who love to play outside in the snow. To help, we’ve ordered 187 tons of sand—road salt is not an option at the shelter because it burns the animals’ feet. We’re budgeting $5,000 to winterize the sanctuary.
Your gift to the Winter Farm Maintenance Fund will help us secure the funds we need.
It takes more work than you might think to keep farm animals safe in the winter. Hens and roosters with particularly large combs are more prone to frostbite, so we’ll coat their combs with Vaseline and move the most vulnerable birds to a warmer area within our Melrose Small Animal Hospital. And we’re ordering lots of straw bedding (186 tons of it!) so that animals like Ogar pig can make nice warm nests in the barn and snuggle with their pig pals during the long, cold winter nights.
And finally, while we prepare to keep our animals safe through the winter, we know that at any moment we could get a call about other farm animals in crisis. To that end, we’re budgeting an additional $55,000 in case of an unexpected emergency rescue situation.
There is a lot to do, but our animal residents are counting on us—not only in Watkins Glen, but also at our shelter in California where the rainy season requires significant flood prevention measures.
Join now to help Farm Sanctuary raise the $169,000 needed to prepare our shelters and carry out all of our efforts for farm animals this winter.
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