Global warming will affect pets

Normally our barns are full of hay by now.   This kitten had made a den among the bales last year.   Now we have no hay at all.   The seemingly endless rain means we can’t get on to the fields to make hay.   The ground is waterlogged and although the grass is taller than ever before, we need a least a fortnight’s continuous dry hot weather to get the hay.   Once the grass has been cut, it is chanelled into rows and then turned until it’s dry and ‘crackly’ – then it’s hay and we can bale it.    If it’s baled white it’s still green and damp it will go musty and be unfit for the animals to eat.

The widespread wet weather means that no one has been able to start haymaking.  The grass is going to seed and losing it’s nutrients.   If we don’t get it in soon it will just be stalks and have no food value.   What are the horses and goats and cattle going to eat over winter?   How will they survive?   We anticipate more horses will be abandoned as the price of keeping them will skyrocket.   If there is enough winter grazing over large areas and not just tiny paddocks, they might stay out so long as the weather isn’t too bad.   What will they eat if we bring them indoors?    It’s doubtful that the oat, barley and wheat harvest will fare any better than the hay but at least there is a few weeks still left for the weather to pick up.

That the jet stream is stuck in one place and bringing us all this wet weather must be because of global warming.   Is it caused by humans and their insatiable desire for manufactured and entirely unsustainable goods.   If we lived naturally, as animals do, there would be no wrecked environment and disastrous (for us) weather.

Please think about his next time you go shopping.   Cats and dogs will be affected by eventual loss of their food source.  In the wild, of course, they would survive.   Only buy goods that are sustainable and from an environmentally safe source.  Consumerism and advetising hype has a lot to answer for – you can help save the planet for pets by changing what you buy.

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