Goats And Hens Gleeful As Utopia Beckons On Animal Farm

The Age

Saturday May 17, 2008

Ian Munro, Woodstock

"LOOK at this, it's like I can move my ankle."

Jenny Brown leans forward, shifting her weight to where her right leg should be, but where an elaborate device of metal, carbon fibre and a hydraulic pump links her knee to a flexible "foot", which under pressure simulates the give of a natural joint.

This is possibly her 20th artificial leg, at $20,000 the most expensive, and clearly the most satisfying. With this leg she walks, hikes and jogs.

Now she wants something equally liberating for her friend, Albie, the goat who found a new life at the farm animal sanctuary she started with her husband four years ago.

Ms Brown lost her lower right leg to cancer at the age of 10. Albie lost his left foreleg in January after he was found wandering in Brooklyn having escaped an even grimmer fate.

He had been hogtied, his legs bound together, the way goats are often transported to market, Ms Brown said. The skin of his left foreleg was broken and the wound infested with maggots.

"We started him on antibiotics, poultice ointments - we tried everything and it wasn't working and you could tell in the X-rays that the infection was in the bone," she said.

Amputation followed, as have three attempts at creating a goat leg prosthesis. On three legs, Albie pitches himself forward in an awkward lunging motion.

Ms Brown's prosthetic specialist has agreed to work pro bono on the project, which involves giving Albie an artificial leg much simpler than her own.

The problem is not with the prosthesis, but with anchoring it to the stump that remains of Albie's leg.

"He's got all this loose skin and that loose skin moves up and down - it's called pistoning in the prosthetics world - so we are trying to find the most comfortable way to keep it on him," Ms Brown said. "He has walked with three different varieties of artificial leg and he has actually done pretty well.

"When people get artificial legs it takes months to get the proper fit, and here we are dealing with an animal that can't tell us 'it's a little tight over on the right', or 'I feel I am kicking my leg out too far'. We are just working on it to make it the most comfortable it can be, but it will definitely work."

Exhaustive treatment is no rarity at the sanctuary. Another goat, Olivia, is recuperating after chemotherapy and homeopathic treatments for cancer. Another goat, recovering from a broken leg, has physiotherapy twice a day. And broiler hens found abandoned and dehydrated in New York were revived with intravenous lines.

Ms Brown abandoned a career in film production to start the sanctuary near the Catskill Mountains after experiences as an occasional undercover investigator for animal rights groups changed her life. The sanctuary survives on donations and with the support of Doug Abel, her husband, who works in film production.

"It is truly farm animals that are the most abused and exploited animals in the world. They suffer beyond our imagination and because they can't speak in ways that enable our comprehension, we do whatever we want to them," Ms Brown said.

As for Albie, the adjustments continue. This week Ms Brown, with her specialist, was considering a revised design for Albie's fourth limb. "I look at him and I can't imagine him having to go around without a leg on," she said.

"I want him to have something that makes him comfortable, that makes his quality of life better. I want him to have the best life possible."

© 2008 The Age

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