Nine members of AYLUS Chapel Hill branch volunteered to clean up animal houses at Piedmont Farm Animal Refuge on September 4th, Sunday. The refuge is a 45-acre sanctuary currently home to farm animals rescued from lives of abuse, neglect, and abandonment. It provides a safe place for the animals with high-quality housing, food, socialization, and medical care.
The event lasted for three and a half hours, and our job was to clean up the animal houses. During the event, Christopher, Jack, Eric, and I were signed to make the poultry houses organized and clean. Our duty was to wash all the fences and walls, remove dirty straws and feathers, and replace them with fresh and clean straws. Luna and Michael were signed to clean up the sheep barn, and Kathryn and Grace were assigned to clean up the goat houses. They removed all dirty and wet bedding straws and replaced them with clean ones. After the cleaning, they also fed the animals fresh hays and awarded them with watermelon as a treat. Cleaning animal houses is not easy, but all our volunteers did a wonderful job. We not only feel proud of making the animal house beautiful and clean, but also had fun learning the animals’ names and personalities and were surprised by their friendly nature.
From participating in this event, I truly wish more people gain concern for the survival of farm animals and hope more volunteers will join us to help these animals live out their lives spans in a safe and loving environment.
Volunteers who participated in this event are: Kevin Chen (3.5 hours), Christopher Wu (3.5 hours), Jack Xu (3.5 hours), Eric Sun (3.5 hours), Luna Chen (3.5 hours), Michael Lan (3.5 hours), Kathryn Hong (3.5 hours), Grace Gao (3.5 hours), and Yi.
Report by Kevin Chen