DRU Piggie Specialist!

At our animal sanctuary, we have given a forever home to around 150 animals, including horses, cows, goats, sheep and pigs. With a small team, we have needed to find a way to provide the best possible care to all of our animals. This has led to the creation of the first of many specialised teams, our DRU Pig Crew. The team is comprised of ten volunteers who are more than happy to care for our pigs and give them loads of cuddles along the way (an important part of pig rescue!).

The key duties of our team are to conduct health and welfare checks, maintain the pigs’ area and provide enrichment to nurture their high intelligence and inquisitive nature. Pigs are considered to be smarter than most domesticated animals, including dogs, and can outperform a child as old as three or four years old on cognitive tests. Because of this, they can get bored easily and need to be in a stimulating environment in which they can practice the same behaviors that wild pigs would in their natural setting.

At DRU, we provide a home to thirteen pigs, where they can spend their days wallowing in mud, eating loads of fruit and veg, and playing and napping with their best piggy pals in the shade. We’ve also recently added a brand-new area for four of our piglets where they can hang out before they’re old enough to join the rest of their new family!

If you’d like to visit our lovely piggies at our Brisbane rescue, we hold open days every second Sunday and we even offer private tours of the sanctuary if you’d like to escape the crowds.

Click here https://www.deathrowunchained.org/sponsor if you’d like to become a buddy and sponsor your new piggy best friend.

Yuens Farmers market loves DRU Animal Rescue

As you can imagine, running Deathrow Unchained is extremely expensive. Next to our rent, food to feed our beautiful animals is our biggest expense.

We recently approached a local business Yuen’s Fruit Market at Underwood to see what they do with the produce they are unable to sell and would typically throw out. They were incredibly receptive and immediately said they would love to help us. We arranged for one bin to be left at their store to be filled with produce that we would then pick up on a daily basis. After hearing more about our story they visited one of our open days, which as you know we hold fortnightly to raise much needed funds. They were so impressed by what we are doing they decided that one bin of produce just wasn’t going to be enough. Most of the produce they supply us with goes to our pigs. Did you know that pigs need to eat about 4% of their body weight per day? Now some of our beautiful pigs weigh around 200kg, and we have around 15 of them, so you can imagine how much produce that equates to … A LOT!!

Yuen’s took time out of their day and bought us 8 bins!! How amazing! Yuen’s have two stores, one located at Underwood and one at Waterford. They even offered to bring produce from their Waterford store to their Underwood store to give us as much produce as possible. The produce that they supply us with helps us immensely and saves us a lot of money. They are a wonderful bunch of humans who really do care about what we are doing, and do a lot to help the local community. We seriously cannot thank them enough for their generosity and willingness to help us.

Be sure to follow them on Facebook or check out their website

Another reason to say Nup to the Melbourne Cup

Esme found collapsed before being rescued by Deathrow Unchained Animal Rescue

The "race that stops the nation", or should it really be the "race that ends a horses life"? According to the Coalition for the protection of racehorses - from the period of 31 August 2018 to 31 July 2019, there were 122 horse deaths via racing. That equates to 1 horse death every 3 days.

While our society views horse racing as a time where they can enjoy a day out or win a lot of money by betting on these horses, it's a sobering fact that one horse dies every 3 days for human entertainment. Think on that for a moment.

While we acknowledge that there are some horse owners that treat their horses as if they are one of their children, there are many that do not. For example, in the racing industry - Victorian horse trainer Darren Weir reportedly 'subjected his horses to psychological conditioning which included torture, abuse, being over worked & terrified'. That is no way to get a horse to do anything.

Esme - Video 7News Toowoomba

Esme is an ex racehorse who ended up at the Laidley Sale Yards, like so many other racehorses that are no longer of use to their previous owners. We were contacted about her horrible condition. She was seizing on the floor, was extremely ill with colic and very very close to her death bed. We had a team go in and collect her and she was brought to us where she was given round the clock vet care. Once she was in our care Esme had a lot of difficultly with colic. Thankfully with the help from the vets we have been able to put her on a feed that her body was able to tolerate and enjoy. Below are some photos of Esme’s life on the track, at the sale yards, then in our care.