Cattle Rescue Project

"Let’s go next door to meet the cows, bulls, donkeys, horses and even a camel, why are they here?"

All cows, bulls, buffaloes, donkeys, horses and a camel that have come to Karuna have a right to life and will be protected and looked after for the rest of their lives. They are not isolated or tied up, they are free to live in the herd and go out grazing in the forest. Cows and buffaloes are free from milk production for profit and most of them are sterilized or castrated.

Cow dung is sold to farmers for compost. Bio gas is provided at the clinic for cooking.

Originally, in India, milk was not the most important product from the cow. Cows and bulls were used in fields and their dung and urine were used to make compost, medicine and other health products. Only the little extra milk left from the cow after feeding her calf was used by the family who owned the cow.

At present, cows and buffaloes are reduced to production units for milk and meat. Cow slaughter is becoming more accepted and practised in spite of it being illegal in India.

90% of the milk produced is from rural areas and small towns. There are 118 million dairy cows and buffalo in India (livestock census Sept. 2014).

In 2007, there were 14 million farmers, 254 milk co-operations, 177 milk unions, and 1,33,000 village level societies. Now (in 2016) the numbers are much higher.

The bio industry in India is one of the worst in the world as rules, regulations and animal laws are not implemented and the whole business thrives on illegality and corruption.

Karuna’s Cattle Rescue Project started in 2002 with the rescue of illegally transported cattle on the way to the slaughterhouse. Good working bulls, dairy buffaloes, calves and local cows are sent for slaughter for minor health disorders or for fear of the annual drought. Millions and millions of cows, calves, bulls and buffaloes are slaughtered as a result of the growing milk industry (Operation Flood) This makes India the largest meat exporter in the world.
The “green revolution” which introduced fertilizers and chemical pesticides to the farmers, has been depleting the soil and killed the natural microorganisms needed for a healthy soil.  The indigenous cattle, which are drought and disease resistant, have been replaced by mechanised farming.

Up to date 2016 Karuna has rescued around 700 head of cattle. The High Court has given permanent custody of 305 head of cattle rescued by Karuna Society. The remaining cases are under trial.

Every year we give pairs of young healthy, castrated bulls to local farmers for adoption under strict legal conditions. The farmers are not owners and in the end the animals have to be returned to Karuna.

Karuna and Buffaloes

"I always felt a strong connection with the buffalo"

Five thousand years ago the water buffalo was domesticated in India. The animals were mainly used in wet land for ploughing the rice fields. They are a source of livelihood for farmers and buffalo milk is much appreciated.
Unlike the “Holy Cow”, revered as our Mother, the buffalo has quite a different image.
According to the Hindu scriptures, the god of death, Yama, is riding a buffalo bull and in other literature the buffalo is seen as a demon.
It is not difficult to see the duality here: white cattle and black cattle, Holy Cow and Demon.

Although the cow is legally protected and slaughter of cows is illegal in most states in India, this does not apply to buffaloes.
Nowadays the buffalo is the main source of milk, meat and leather production. Starving male calves are killed for leather and the female buffaloes are in large numbers slaughtered as beef for export. At present India is proud to be the largest milk and meat exporter in the world.

Karuna Society has rescued cattle of all breeds and colour for the sake of saving the lives of the animals.
Although in the early years we used the buffalo milk to sell milk products, we soon learned that without selling the male buffalo calves for slaughter Karuna was breeding an ever growing buffalo herd which we could not feed.

At present we have approximately 120 buffaloes, half male and half female and we have castrated and sterilised them all as we had to stop the reproduction. As a consequence there is no income from milk but Karuna has to feed the buffaloes for the rest of their lives.

Karuna is the first cattle rescue project to have sterilised the female buffaloes.

The Next Step: WAKING UP FROM DOMESTICATION

"Remembering Who They Are"

There is a story by Louise Erdrich in which she writes about one of the last buffalo hunts in the US that left 1,200 animals dead. After that hunt:

This quote is from “The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich.

If you know about the buffalo hunts, you perhaps know that the one I describe, now many generations past, was one of the last. Directly after that hunt, in fact, before which Father LaCombe made a great act of contrition and the whirlwind destruction, lasting twenty minutes, left twelve hundred animals dead, the rest of the herd did not bolt away but behaved in a chilling fashion.

As many witnesses told it, the surviving buffalo milled at the outskirts of the carnage, not grazing but watching with an insane intensity, as one by one, swiftly and painstakingly, each carcass was dismantled. Even through the night, the buffalo stayed, and were seen by the uneasy hunters and their families the next dawn to have remained standing quietly as though mourning their young and their dead, all their relatives that lay before them more or less unjointed, detongued, legless, headless, skinned. At noon the flies descended. The buzzing was horrendous. The sky went black. It was then, at the sun’s zenith, the light shredded by scarves of moving black insects, that the buffalo began to make a sound.

It was a sound never heard before, no buffalo had ever made this sound. No one knew what the sound meant, except that one old toughened hunter sucked his breath in when he heard it and as the sound increased he attempted not to cry out. Tears ran over his cheeks and down his throat, anyway, wetting his shoulders, for the sound gathered power until everyone was lost in the immensity. That sound was heard once and never to be heard again, that sound made the body ache, the mind pinch shut. An unmistakable and violent grief, it was as though the earth itself was sobbing. One cow, then a bull, charged the carcasses. Then there was another sight to add to the sound never heard before. Situated on a slight rise, the camp of hunters watched in mystery as the entire herd, which still numbered thousands, began to move. Slightly at first, then more violently, the buffalo proceeded to trample, gore, even bite their dead, to crush their brothers bones into the ground with their stone hooves, to toss into the air chunks of murdered flesh, and even, soon, to run down their own calves. The whole time they uttered a sound so terrible that the people were struck to the core and could never speak of what they saw for a long time afterward.

“The buffalo were taking leave of the earth and all they loved,” said the old chiefs and hunters after years had passed and they could tell what split their hearts. “The buffalo went crazy with grief to see the end of things. Like us, they saw the end of things and like many of us, many today, they did not care to live.”

This is a moment I recognize as the fundamental destruction of the integrity and soul of the buffalo herd. They were never the same. “The buffalo went crazy with grief to see the end of things”. I think they withdrew their soul to the “Undisclosed Realm”. and even if they were physically surviving on earth their offspring would not be the same, less buffalo, lesser beings to be overpowered, domesticated, abused and used.

(For the full story, click here: Buffalo Hunt Story Link)

This is a moment that can be recognized as the fundamental destruction of the integrity and soul of the buffalo herd. They were never the same. "The buffalo went crazy with grief to see the end of things". Traumatized, in shock, their souls withdrew from their bodies. Even as they were physically surviving on earth, their offspring could not be the same, they were less buffalo, “lesser beings” to be overpowered, domesticated, to be abused and used.

“Lesser Beings” are life forms that have been traumatized/compromised to the point of being incapable of being the life forms they are meant to be. They have experienced an existential trauma that makes them ‘less of themselves.’ It is my understanding that no cure or welfare measure will solve the problem, if the root cause of how ‘lesser beings’ are created is not acknowledged and understood.

Domestication: The Fundamental Betrayal of Trust

Domestication has provided us with power over nature. It will destroy us. Domestication is a centuries-long process of overpowering and controlling animals and nature for selfish reasons, generation after generation, destroying the natural trust that once existed between species.

The human rational mind has no problem recognizing and proving the inferiority of the traumatized life forms. They are all "Lesser Beings" without mind and soul. The result of this collective trauma affects every individual of that species, and it is handed down to the next generation through the collective memory and locked into the genes. This happens to all species we have domesticated. Example: Cows and buffaloes are reduced to production units for milk and meat. Animals have become commodities, property, production units. It is easy to see for everybody that they are "not the same as us". Even their pain and agony are not acknowledged.

Marc Bekoff Ph.D. ( Animal Emotions) writes: "Domestication is one among several examples of collective trauma experienced by animals. We should include nonhumans among those who can suffer from collective encultured trauma and do all we can to coexist with them."

See his article here: Domestication and Other Animal Traumas

Karuna’s Rescued Cattle and the "Wild Herd"

Karuna has rescued cows and buffalo since 2002. All cows, bulls, buffaloes, donkeys, horses and a camel that have come to Karuna have a right to life and will be protected and looked after for the rest of their lives. They are not isolated or tied up, they are free to live in the herd and go out grazing in the forest. Cows and buffaloes are free from milk production for profit and most of them are sterilized or castrated.

At present there is a separate group of 118 healthy cows and buffaloes at Karunapalli (the second compound, close to the forest), they are sterilized and castrated. They are taken out for grazing in the forest by our long-term attendants, whom they know. They are being fed during the summer drought. They have no other purpose than "being themselves, remembering who they are!", overcoming the trauma of domestication. We call them "The Wild Herd".

This is a very special project for Karuna as it is providing a safe haven for cows and buffalo to recover from centuries long trauma to their species - an effort from our side to restore the trust between species.

If you want to be part of this process of liberation and carry with us the responsibilities, please send a WhatsApp message to me on 0091- 9490360218 or contact us on karunasociety@gmail.com.

Warmly,

Clementien Pauws Koenegras

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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