Rob 0:03
Hello. Time sliders.
This is
Time is Sliding
podcasting about change
personal,
commercial,
political,
local, national, globa
and I’m Rob Baylis.
Liz and T.J. are the founders of the Full of Joy Animal Sanctuary. You’re going to hear these fascinating people in this episode.
Full of Joy is run on vegan principles and on a not for profit basis by volunteers. It provides forever homes to animals in need, including pigs, goats, ponies, chickens, turkeys, geese and sheep. I hope listening to Liz and T.J. will give you some unique insights into human behaviour and attitudes towards other animals and what needs to change. The discussion was recorded face to face in the sanctuary’s stables. We left the door open, but gentle breezes were increasingly being picked up noisily by the microphones. I didn’t want to interrupt Liz & T. J. ‘s flow so some wind noise got recorded. But I hope my editing has managed to minimise its impact on your listening pleasure. You’ll still be able to hear animal noises, including Morgan, the cat who makes a special entry and purrs along. Occasional vehicles can be heard in the road nearby too. The soundscape is all part of the context.
Just over a week after the recording, the sanctuary suffered a calamitous change. Storm Éowyn destroyed the entire stables. The roof of our recording venue was blown completely off and impaled on a tree quite a distance away. No animals were injured, thankfully, but some were shaken up. They are still being looked after, but it’ll take a while to get proper accommodation on site for them again. It’s darkly ironic that TJ had mentioned in the recorded discussion that the stables were in need of an overhaul from the ground up instead of a patch and repair from above.
Understandably, Liz and T.J. are appealing for financial help to get back to being fully operational. Their crowdfunding appeal has gone well, but they still need more. So please donate if you can via a crowdfunding link from the Full of Joy website at www dot full, hyphen or dash, of, hyphen, Joy, hyphen, animal, hyphen, sanctuary, dot co dot UK. That link’s in the episode notes along with the other ways you can help, as mentioned in the discussion.
This particular episode of Time is Sliding is part of the 2025 Podcasthon. More than 1000 podcasts will raise awareness of charities of their choice between March the 15th and 21st.
Podcasthon has grown in two years from a French initiative involving 300 podcasts to a global movement through which voices come together to amplify the work of charities and inspire change. There’s more about Podcasthon, that’s podcast with an h o n at the end. So Podcasthon dot org. That link’s in the episode notes too. Now let’s hear Liz and T.J. themselves.
Rob 5:16
We’re in a shed on a sanctuary on a hillside with blazing sunshine outside. And there’s been snow. And we’re going to hear lots of noises like vehicles passing by. Geese, potentially, other birds, maybe even a pig.
T.J. 5:44
Munching horses.
Liz 5:45
Yeah.
Rob 5:46
Yeah. So would you like to introduce yourselves, please?
T.J. 5:52
My name is T.J. and I’m one of the founders of Full of Joy Sanctuary.
Liz 5:55
And I’m Liz, and I’m the other founder of Full of Joy Sanctuary.
Rob 6:00
Okay, so what is Full of Joy Sanctuary?
Liz 6:03
So we are a vegan animal sanctuary and what we try and do is to offer forever homes. Sometimes we rehome animals, too, but a lot of the time we are offering forever homes to animals that have had the worst lives. And so we take animals other charities, sometimes can’t cope with or can’t re- home or ponies with behavioural problems that nobody else wants. So we try and take the ones that are really, really desperate and give them the best life we can, the most enrichment. Yeh keep them safe, keep them healthy, but also give them some fun, give them some joy. That’s why we call ourselves Full of Joy.
Rob 6:50
That’s nice. Nice.
T.J. 6:51
and help them get over their fear of the human race.
Liz 6:54
Yeah, a lot of them come, nearly all of them come absolutely traumatized by humans. And I mean we call ourselves Full of Joy because, A, we want to give them joy back into their lives after humans, nearly always humans, have taken away. But B, they give us so much joy, you know, seeing an animal that suddenly trusts you and is suddenly happy and is suddenly enjoying themselves, it just is. You know, we get a lot back- It’s joyful.
T.J. 7:22
and behaving like their species.
Liz 7:24
Yeah. A pig being a pig. A pony being a pony. Nobody’s expecting them to be playthings, or leisure, you know, things or…
T.J. 7:34
objects.
Liz 7:34
objects. Yeah…
T.J. 7:35
to put in your handbag.
Rob 7:36
I was struck on the way here, seeing sort of a purebred dog come out of one of the farm houses I walked past and I thought, Why? Why actually do people want purebred dog breeds that are special, you know, they look a particular type. And actually, I wonder whether there’s an element of toys in it.
Liz 8:08
I think so. I mean, we’ve both volunteered in different charities before this. And the stories that you hear … so one dog charity we both volunteered at… a dog came back because it was the wrong colour, didn’t match the curtains.
Rob 8:19
Oh, my gosh.
Liz 8:20
It’s just it’s so… beyond anything that you can ever
T.J. 8:24
I think,
Liz 8:24
imagine really.
T.J. 8:26
We don’t do what we did in the eighties, in the seventies of latchkey dogs and we’re neutering more. You’re not getting the crosses that we got in the past. It was unheard of that you could get puppies from rescue, really young puppies. They were normally after people who got bored of them at like six or seven months. They’d gone past the cute stage. They were needing a lot of extra work and people weren’t willing to put it in. Whereas now you can get puppy dachshunds, you can get a puppy cockapoo, you can get everything that people could possibly want from a rescue, but people still pay breeders thousands of pounds and you know, it’s back street breeders that just breed and breed and breed.
Rob 9:14
Mm.
Liz 9:15
We don’t do dogs here.
All 9:17
We don’t do dogs.
T.J. 9:18
I mean we’ve got dogs and you know we did a lot around the XL bully crisis.
Rob 9:24
In what way?
T.J. 9:27
So we fostered for another charity before the ban and they took in a few pregnant XL bullies and the one that we, we fostered a litter from, she was dumped at a vet’s with 11 puppies that were nearly four weeks old. So they just were at the start of weaning. But mum had been over bred and basically had mastitis in almost all her teats, and they hadn’t taken them to the vet’s, they’d become infected and she had to have them basically all removed because of the sheer amount of infection that she had to save her life. And suddenly there was 11 puppies that she couldn’t look after in a mum sort of way. So they all got split up just before the ban. So every single one of them puppies needed a home before the ban came in. Um, and we’ve only got one because he didn’t find a home because there were just so many trying to find homes and people dumping them or getting paid £200 by the government to put them to sleep. So you had people making money out of it going, “O well, I’ll look after your dog you don’t want anymore. Free to good home XL bullies”. And so they were taking them on. Taking them to the vet, putting them down for 200 quid. And then, since then, the amount of abuse that has happened, physical abuse, we’ve had them being drowned in Burnley Canal and they’ve been assaulted. They’ been shot by the police. D’you know what I mean? The whole thing … and everybody goes, it’s not going to work now they’re going for care and courses. So it’s big breed dogs.
Liz 11:18
Dogs People either want a toy or they’re trying to make money from them a lot of time with all the breeds. Yeah.
T.J. 11:26
And they did it with micro pigs, which is why we’ve got micro pigs we haven’t got ex-farm.
Liz 11:31
And goats, we’ve got a massive problem with goats currently.
T.J. 11:34
Down south isn’t it? Down Kent way. But micro pigs… a celebrity had them in their handbag … said it was a micro pig and actually it was just a piglet. And normally they breed runts with runts so that they can keep them small and they don’t feed them enough. So they stay small and then people get them and they grow and they keep growing because they’re not. There’s no such thing as a micro pig. So and then people keep them in their houses, they destroy the houses because they, you know, they do normal pig behaviour and then they chuck them into tiny sheds with no straw, no stimulation, and then the pigs get bored. The breeders are still breeding so-called micro pigs. Um, the whole animal exploitation trade is just, it’s all about people trying to make a fast buck off female animals.
Liz 12:37
Or people not understanding and just thinking they want this. They want the animal to fit into their lives.
Rob 12:42
It’s this cute again isn’t it
Liz 12:44
Yeah. It’s cute. It’s good on Instagram. And then instead of thinking, this is a soul, this is a being, this is its own individual, what does this animal need? They just want the animal to fit in with them. And so when they say an animal’s gotta be,I mean nearly every single one of our animals that’s come going… “they’re dangerous, they have behavioural problems” and they haven’t. Not one of them.Two of the pigs that are meant to have behaviour problems sit on our knee, they have cuddles, they’re sweet because we treat them with respect and we don’t dress them up and expect them up to be something they’re not. We listen to them.
T.J. 13:18
And we also understand that at particular times of the month, especially female pigs, they come into season and their behaviour does change and it’s kind of going, alright, “you want some space, you’ve got really bad PMT, you want this space”, and you go, “that’s fine, have some more space”. and two days later they’re like, “No, I want a cuddle now. I don’t need the space anymore. ” And that’s fine too. So it’s, it’s kind of understanding animals for being individuals and themselves rather than treating them as as you would a piece of a teddy bear.
Liz 13:55
It’s funny isn’t it? Some of our volunteers get it automatically and some need teaching and then they’re great. But a lot of people come on and they’re like, “I want to stroke him” and you’re like you can stroke him if he wants stroking. And if they say no, then it’s no. And that’s something that doesn’t come normally to a lot of humans. They just want to grab. And, yo know, and then they’re just like, “oh, it’s so cute and I wanna huddle and cuddle and I want to stroke them”. And you say “he’s turned his head away. That’s a no”. And then they’re like “but I just want… ” “No!. You know, it’s a no”.
Rob 14:27
That’s really, really interesting because someone I know who is running a course on consent. Yeah. And it’s to do with sort of humans.
Liz 14:38
Okay.
Rob 14:39
But you know, the same thing goes.
Liz 14:42
And that’s how we get that trust quite quickly. So Gimli the goat’s just come and you could almost see him. I put my hand out to see if he wanted a stroke and he went. “Oh, no, I don’t”. And he backed off. I was okay and walked away. And you could almost see him thinking, “What? You’re not going to chase me”, you know, And that’s how you get their trust. And then they know that if they come for a cuddle or a stroke, if they want one, and if they don’t, then they don’t. But what we do with all of them, I mean, the reason we handle all of them at all is because they are domestic domestic animals and we do need to you know, if there’s an injury, we need to check them over. We need to make sure the vet can you know, it’s not too traumatic for them. So what we do very slowly and carefully is be able to feel them all over,feel their feet, make sure we can clip their feet.You know, that kind of thing. But the cuddles andf hugs and things like that, it’s all consensual. And actually we get to a stage with all of them. So pigs in the winter need Vaseline on their nose. It stops them getting sore and I just show the pot to Sam and Frodo now and they literally lie down and go “go on then. On my feet. On my nose”. But they know it’s not going to hurt and they know it’s okay.
Rob 15:51
that’s lovely.
Liz 15:52
Yeah. Yeah. And we can clipper them like, you know… Farmers sedate, they use these really forceful ways of doing things with pigs and you don’t need to. Just get to know them. Show ’em what you’re doing, get that trust. Same with all animals isn’t it?
Rob 16:09
Then farmers are not treating the animals as individuals are they?,
Liz 16:13
No. I don’t think they can because if they did and if they got to know them, I mean, this is probably a bit controversial, but if they really got to know their animals, if they got to know their animals and they really understood that… So I know somebody who had a pig and I and he wasn’t clippering his feet because he said that the pig was dangerous. And I offered to come and sit with the pig like we do with ours, get him to trust me. And then I’d clip his feet for him and the farmer literally said, “I can’t do that because if I get to know him, I won’t be able to make money from him”. And, you know, that’s more where I think if you knew, if you really understand the intelligence and brilliance of these animals, I don’t know how you could send them off. I don’t know how you can kill them or take the calves away from them or eat them.
Rob 16:59
I think farmers in the past did actually get to know them, but..
Liz 17:03
Maybe.
Rob 17:04
I don’t think I think there’s too many animals that they’re keeping now to actually get to know..
Liz 17:08
Yeah.
Rob 17:09
I mean, most most farmed animals are actually in sheds, aren’t they.
T.J. 17:14
Yeah, well, they’re not even in sheds. I mean female pigs are kept in crates on their sides and they’re just… that’s how they live… on their sides, just breeding piglet after piglet. And then the piglets only live to kind of 6 to 9 months. They don’t live very long before they’re sent off. They’re fattened up really quickly,pumped with loads of antibiotics, which is why we’re having a problem with antibiotics actually working because viruses and bacteria are getting round them. And then you’ve got these pigs that just, literaly, these female sows, that’s their life is living in a metal cage on their side that’s it… in massive big sheds. There’s thousands of them. That’s it. And the excuse is they might crush their piglets. Well, if you give the female pig room, then she’s not going to lie down and crush them because she’s got room to actually lie down.
Rob 18:11
Absolutely.
Liz 18:12
But it’s the same with everything. So this is another controversial thing for ponies and horses. I mean, I freely admit that I grew up in the horse world and I look back and I’m ashamed that I used to ride them. I used to event them. I used to jump them. I loved it. And something just clicked in my brain one day that actually, you know, that they’re sentient, but they’re not motorbikes, they’re not bikes. You know, I lost a lot of friends when I stopped riding and I had people trying to say to me that they enjoy it, they love it. And I’m like, Well, why have we got whips then and why have we got spurs and why do we have bits in their mouths that are made of metal? And, you know, if you put a, if you put a showjumping course up in the field, I’ve never seen a pony that’s not being ridden. Just go, “oh I’ll go round that course and have some fun”, you know.
Rob 19:01
Yeah.
Liz 19:02
And I think we see them as just, as just leisure things like a boat or, you know, just leisure tools instead of the beautiful individuals that they are.
T.J. 19:16
And I think I was I was really shocked about how… around horses, is that they’re just bought and sold like, like you would a car or a bike. “Oh well I’ve I’ve got bored of that one. I need the next stage because I’ve gone up the next level” and you just get rid of it and you might have had that and you see people selling things for like 20, you know, they’ve had them for 20 years, but because all their kids have grown up, they’re like, “Oh, well, somebody else can look after it now”. And it’s like.
Liz 19:44
There was an advert the other day. I mean, there’s loads of adverts, but broke my heart. It said, “Lovely horse free to a good home”. Had him for I think he’s like 18, 19 years and…
Rob 19:56
That is a cat!
All 19:56
Yeah. Yeah. Right. Okay.
Rob 20:00
That is a cat getting near the microphone.
Liz 20:02
Come here Morgan. Can you get him?
Rob 20:06
Yes, Well, I presume you have to compromise on what you feed..
T.J. 20:10
Yeah.
Liz 20:11
Yeah. Well, it’s not just that, it’s that cats are …. so and I do agree with it … that cats are very good predators. They kill a lot of our natural wildlife. And it’s not the cat’s fault. It’s just that there’s so many people with so many cats. So just in our little hamlet alone, there’s probably … everybody’s got two or three cats haven’t they? And and the numbers of cats versus the number of small birds and the wildlife is really problematic. And every year … because we do a lot of wildlife rehab as well… And every year we get things that have been munched by cats coming in and we try to help them. We’ve decided not to have any more cats after this, haven’t we? He was a feral, a barn cat that… that isn’t very feral.
T.J. 20:57
I was in a cruelty case with a variety… it was a hoarding situation where somebody had like 30 cats and he didn’t do very well in the cattery. He started biting and attacking people. So they rang us because they always used to… we used to take in biting ferrets off them. So the ferret bit, they used to ring us up and ask if we would take the ferret.
And they asked for the same reason. Would we take … would we take him because he was biting people. They didn’t want at home. And we said, “Go on then” and within.. And he doesn’t like …. He won’t live in a house. He likes living up here or in a stable. And yeah.
Liz 21:48
But we have endless discussions about cats and how because it’s not the cat’s fault. We love cats. It’s just there’s so many of them. And they really are a massive problem in, in,in our countryside.
T.J. 21:59
and they’re also one of the most massively exploited ..
Liz 22:03
Yeah. No absolutely.
T.J. 22:04
… animals as well as in people have litter after litter and they don’t necessarily find them homes and then they chuck them out. So then you have the, you know, then you have people trying to catch them and neuter them and the the diseases that they get, you know, massive ulcers, eyes, kittens, bleeding to death from various treatable, vaccinate-able diseases just because they’re a commodity.
Liz 22:39
There’s no easy solutions to any of it. It’s been really exciting. One of our fields has become a designated wildlife area, but we have been advised not to put animals on it all the time. It’s only twice a year. So that’s it’s getting the balance between not overgrazing the land and making sure the land is healthy and also trying to save and help as many animals you can. It’s just it’s like the cats is always a compromise. There’s always somewhere, you know, there’s no easy answers to any of this stuff. Is there? I don’t think, yeah.
Rob 23:13
Well, I think we’ve covered what challenges you face. Well, we’ve covered a lot of them. I suspect there are more. Is there any that you’d like to to add to what you’ve already said in terms of the challenges you face?
Liz 23:28
The biggest challenge for us is is both for us personally, and to try and explain to people, is that we cannot take too many on.
Rob 23:38
Mhm.
Liz 23:38
So one of the things that we’re really, really committed to is to making sure that every animal that comes here has the best quality of life and that means room, that means time, that means money, which means that we cannot take everything or hardly any but that, you know, people ring and say can say, “can you take this, can you take that”? And the answer is nearly always “no, I’m really sorry”. We get quite a lot of abuse, quite a lot of backlash against that. It’s like “it’s your job, y a rescue,you’re a sanctuary”,
Rob 24:07
Really!
Liz 24:08
Oh yeh. Get so much abuse and there’s a, and there’s a, and there’s a real “do we want to publicise ourselves and say we’re here? But then the abuse ups. I mean, I know a lot of rescues have gone out, have stopped being rescues and sanctuaries because of the amount of abuse they get because people just think you’re there. “You should be looking after this animal” and we don’t. We would become part of the problem. So just in the last week there’s been something like ten pigs that needed a new home… that we’ve seen. But if we took them all on, they’d just have tiny homes again, you know, they’d have no land, they’d have no hope. You know, it would just be as bad as where they’d come from wouldn’t it. So we try and be very, very strict and say we can only do what we can do. And the same with rehabbing wildlife. We do rehab wildlife, we don’t publicise it very widely because again, you just get you get quite a lot of abuse and also you feel very bad if you can’t help. But you know, wildlife rehab is so expensive, so time consuming and we want to do it properly. So therefore we just do a little bit and that’s all we can do. And that, that for me, that’s the biggest challenge. Is it for you?
T.J. 25:21
I think it’s also well meaning people. Other people that are into animal rights other people that are into animal welfare, or vegan as well. They’ll kind of like send us posts going “this animal needs rescuing” and you’re almost… as if you’re being guiltied into doing something.And it’s like, but we can’t there’s only there’s only a limited amount of time in a day and there’s only a limited amount of volunteers. There’s only a limited amount of money. So you can’t So it’s that as well is that your you get pressure from within your own movement almost, and then you try and help and then you’re…
Liz 26:17
We have got… One of the joys of it, though,is we have got a real group of people that are just wonderful. You know, like the people that support us. They are amazing. Our volunteers are.
T.J. 26:27
Crafters.
Liz 26:28
Oh, they just keep us going. Yeah. We’ve got some people who come up and help and you call them and they’re just there and we’ve got people who try and make money for us which is just And they really, you know, got, we’ve never felt so supported in doing this have we? There’s a real group of people that are just… brilliant and they know… and they protect us as well and they’re like you can’t, we can’t take everything on. So they back people off if they try … nice people but just who don’t understand, we can’t take everything so..
T.J. 26:57
and our idea is that we can keep it going until after we can no longer do it. So there’s a lot of rescues that get closed down because there’s nobody to take it over after it.. You know, whether you become ill and you can’t carry on or you die and you can’t carry on and…
All 27:21
all laugh and words lost.
Liz 27:25
You’re right. You can’t carry on if you die.
T.J. 27:26
Suddenly you have a life changing incident and you can’t carry it on. And it’s kind of trying to do it so that we can hopefully…
Liz 27:33
We both have progressive illnesses. so we are planning for the future when we can’t.
T.J. 27:37
Yes.
Liz 27:38
We’re hoping someone will take it over. And we at some point…
T.J. 27:41
or a group of people.
Liz 27:42
A group of people take it over.
Rob 27:43
That would be good. It must be difficult for you to see an animal that needs help, but you can’t take them. I mean, how do you cope with that?
Liz 27:54
Me , personally, very badly. So I try and protect myself from it. I don’t look at Facebook. I try not to. And yeah, I try not to because I really struggle. But then, I mean, again, going back to a name Full of Joy, I really try and focus on the absolute joy that we’re giving the animals we’ve got and try and focus on that because otherwise, you know, I said, you can’t solve all these huge environmental problems in the world. You know, the rainforest and the plastic issues. But what I can do is or what we can do is just help one thing or one animal.
T.J. 28:37
Or one or one biodiversity.
Liz 28:40
or one field that we need to protect When Sam, one of the pigs, came, he had been trapped inside. He’d been in a shed for about, oh, years. Hadn’t he? He was in such a bad way … or months anyway. And he, he saw the grass and he just started to run. And we’ve got a video of him running and jumping and squealing.And , you know If ever feeling a bit, why are we doing this? We’re not making any difference. It’s just. You know,you just remember Sam running around in sheer glee and we all just we all just sobbed didn’t we. But in happy
Just look at him. Just look at him go. Be we work with a charity called Every Pig Rescue. We work very closely with them. And so, yeah. So just seeing him and it’s the same for all of them, isn’t it? That’s what keeps you going.
Rob 29:33
Brilliant.
Liz 29:33
And the wildlife, when you let… something … we had a wood pigeon recently who was really badly injured and we had to look after him day and night and he was in the cage for months and it seemed awful. And then he got better and we released him. And that moment of releasing him and seeing him circle around the trees was just… made it all worth it. I know it’s only one pigeon but… You know.
Rob 29:58
As you said earlier on, they’re all individuals.
All 30:02
Yeah. Yeah.
Rob 30:02
Just like you or me, we’re individuals that have senses and… desires.
T.J. 30:09
Yeah. And you’re making the difference for that one life.
Liz 30:12
And that’s all you can do is just try and make differences to each life that you, that you come across, can’t you. And that’s, that’s how you cope with all these awful things that you can’t do.
Rob 30:24
What one thing would you like to see changed in society that would benefit what you’re doing?
T.J. 30:34
Stop irresponsible breeding.
Rob 30:37
Okay.
T.J. 30:40
if you stop irresponsible breeding and if the government… to have a pig, if we just do pigs… to have a pig, you have to get a number off the government, off Defra, to have a pig.
Rob 30:56
So this is, this is to keep one Yea.
T.J. 31:01
Right. Yeah. So you have to do that first legally. And how Defra can give pig numbers or herd numbers to people that live in a terraced house in the middle of a town or city… What are they… What are they thinking? Because people go and buy these micro pigs and they get told “O you just have to apply for this online” and then they get given their number and then they can have that pig.
Rob 31:36
Really?
T.J. 31:40
Nobody checks, nobody does anything. And yeah, and back street breeders of dogs, you know, everybody’s on their knees. The big charities and everybody told the government during COVID you’re going to face a problem. And no government has kind of looked at it properly and come up with a proper solution, even though proper solutions are being given to them. They just just seem to ignore it or they go, “Oh, everybody doesn’t like this breed, let’s ban it” and just cause more of a problem.
Rob 32:16
Can I just ask what is the solution then?
T.J. 32:20
What is the solution?
Rob 32:21
just to be clear.
T.J. 32:22
for dogs? For dogs, it would be licensing and training and education at school. So educate basic education about animals and looking, and looking after animals as sentient beings rather than as commodities. I mean…
Liz 32:43
Going to say if we could have all animals as equals. So I think it’s a bit more philosophical, but there’s a lovely cartoon that shows cats and dogs on one side of a fence and pigs and cows on the other, and they’re going, “How do I get on your side? Because you’ve got… rights. I mean, there’s still loads of problems, but people see you as sentient beings, whereas they see us as you know”. And so I would like, yeah,all animals to have the same rights for responsible ownership, so-called ownership.
Rob 33:11
Can you own an individual?
Liz 33:15
We don’t own them do we but you know what I mean that’s…
T.J. 33:18
We share our lives with them.
Liz 33:19
Yeah.
Rob 33:20
Yeah.
T.J. 33:21
And we try and make their lives as fulfilling as possible.
Liz 33:24
Yeah. If People people co see people could see animals as individuals with individual needs, then that would be…
T.J. 33:29
And a lot of the time it is social media that’s kind of fuelling quite a lot. So, you know, behavioural problems with pigs got rid of when they kind of reached six, seven months and people are just abandoning them in woods, by roads, in lay-bys, but they’re doing the same to rabbits, dogs and goats in Kent. Suddenly there was a craze about goats and so now there’s a whole bunch of pygmy goats in Kent that people are trying… And it’s always the rescues that have got no money, t have got to pick it up. And it’s about time that actually… the government is the only thing that can come up with a solution or that there’s solutions already out there. But they can come up with the legislation to protect, you know, including mass… You know, we’ve still got bird flu. And you have a look at where all the bird flu comes from. It comes from your turkey farms. It comes from your massive chicken farms. It doesn’t come from the wild birds. It comes from commercialisation and the overuse of chemicals and antibiotics and lack of care. Because you’re trying to get things to grow faster, you breeding things to basically grow in a few months to be eaten.
Liz 34:53
When we started out, we were we, we thought we were going to kind of try and rescue things from the farming system, from the meat because we’re vegans and we were going to try. And so we had some turkeys and we’ve had some sheep from farmers and things like that. But actually it’s very difficult to… because farmers put money into animals, so they want the money out. So it’s quite difficult to get into farming communities and say, “Let’s rescue, you know, let’s retire your animal into somewhere nice, or let us”… And actually what we found is that the so-called pets industry for farm animals is almost as bad. You know, it’s just it needs as much help. They have as bad lives as they do on farms, some of these so-called pets.
Rob 35:39
Did you actually say what Defra should do instead of what they do now with pigs?
T.J. 35:45
They should check where the pig is going to be housed. So is it going to be housed in a patio, in a tiny yard, in a terraced house, or in a house?
Liz 36:03
The trouble with that is that pigs aren’t counted, as they haven’t got the same rights as so-called domestic animals.
Rob 36:09
You don’t need a licence for a dog at the moment, do you?
Liz 36:12
No, you don’t. The reason that you need a licence for a pig is because they think there’s…
T.J. 36:18
It’s because of disease, rather than…
Liz 36:18
Yeah, but for example, if we have to have one of our pigs put down because it’s, you know, it’s the kindest thing, they have to go to the abattoir. We can’t bury them because they’re not pets. Same with the sheep. You can’t, there’s no such thing as a pet pig in legal.
Rob 36:39
Wow.
Liz 36:40
Yeah. They are not, they have none of the same rights. So therefore people can just stick them in coal sheds. They can just stick them in back gardens. They can do whatever they want. And if you ring the RSPCA and say, you know, “this pig is getting mistreated, this goose is getting mistreated”, they very rarely come out and that’s because they don’t have… the legislation isn’t there. They don’t need to be kept in the same way, do they? There’s no protection for farm animals, so-called farm animals. Bec, if there was, you couldn’t kill them and eat them, could you? I mean, I get the problem. You know, you couldn’t treat them in the way that we do. So.
Rob 37:17
Yeah. But they have to go to an abattoir when your pigs die?
Liz 37:22
It’s absolutely the worst thing we have to do.
T.J. 37:26
You don’t do it do you?
Liz 37:27
Yeah. I can’t do it
Rob 37:29
You can’t just bury the pig on your land?
Liz 37:33
You’ve had them for years, you know them, you’ve hugged them, they’re your friend and you have to get somebody to come and they just drag them away in chains and it’s like “they’re dead”, you know?
T.J. 37:41
But they’re still your friend.
Liz 37:44
they. It’s. It’s. It’s just. Yeah, it’s horrific.
Rob 37:49
D’you know, I’ve learned so much from you two today.
T.J. 37:52
I mean, that’s the hardest part. That’s the hardest part of doing large animal rescue… is the fact that you have to get somebody that you know, for a job, slaughters animals every day, to come and pick up your friend.
Liz 38:10
And the difference,you know, you really see it. So quite often ponies and horses are taken away as well. But because they know that ponies and horses are like people’s friends, they really try and they go, “we won’t have any over animals in the truck and we’ll try”. They try and be a bit respectful. There’s whole companies that you can get out that, you know, try and try and do it nicely. But if it’s a pig or sheep, there’s none of that. There’s none of it. They will just, I don’t know… It’s just like there’s this dividing line between what people like and what people don’t like. And it’s really obvious, isn’t it?
T.J. 38:46
A it would depend on what country you come from because.
Liz 38:48
We get that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
T.J. 38:50
Because, you know, not so many not so long ago we had a big outbreak in this country about horses being put into the food chain.
Liz 39:00
But actually, if you eat cows, I don’t see what the difference is really?
T.J. 39:01
ot places eat dogs and cats and it’s seen… or guinea pigs.
Liz 39:08
As this massive awful thing… and it’s like but you’re eating a pig and they’re just just as clever and lovely as a dog.
T.J. 39:14
They are amazingly clever. You know, our pigs come up with their own… we don’t do their bed.
Liz 39:20
We’re not allowed to!
T.J. 39:22
We’re not allowed to do that. But they come up with the most amazing… so they’ll know which direction the wind’s coming. So they’ll set up their own draught-proofing… the fact that they say that pigs are dirty… I mean, even in the snow that we’ve had about 20 centimetres of snow, they have waded through that snow to go to the toilet. They won’t go anywhere near their beds. They won’t go anywhere near where their water is.
Liz 39:49
They’re only dirty if you don’t give them space and they’ve got no choice and they hate it. Don’t they? They hate it.
Rob 39:54
It’s amazing.
Liz 39:55
They are beautiful, clever things.
Rob 39:57
Okay, so you’d change the way people own, in inverted commas. Keep animals.
T.J. 40:06
Yeah. They’re not objects. They’re not things to dispose of.They’re, you know, they’re not fast fashion. They’re things, they’re not objects, they’re living sentient beings that need…
Liz 40:21
They become attached to you.
T.J. 40:22
Yeh.
Liz 40:23
When I was saying before about this advert and it said this pony she had it for 17 years, and it winnies to her, it will winnie to you every time you come in and it’s like, no, no, it’ll winnie to you because this pony knows you and it trusts you. And you know,this isn’t a selling point.This is a horse that is bonded to you and you’re just… and some of the ponies have just been passed on and on. And they really do become bonded with people. They trust you. And then we throw them out. And it’s just… if we saw every animal as an animal for life that was going to be our friend for life, regardless of whether it’s got a you know, whether it’s a pig or a cat or a, you know, whatever is, things would be a lot better, wouldn’t they? I know things happen. You know, you can’t help it if somebody suddenly gets ill or, you know,and things do happen and then you need to and then you rehome responsibly, but not just see them as commodities.
Rob 41:21
Hmm Okay. So how can people listening to this support Full of Joy Sanctuary?
Liz 41:30
Oh, wow.There’ll be lots of ways. So you can find us on Facebook or Instagram or we’ve got Kofi pages, but there’s lots of ways people can get involved. They can either volunteer with us and we need everything from kind of people who come out in the fields and poo-pick with us. And, you know, we even have people who come up and just cuddle the pigs, which sounds… that’s a really good job because it lets us get on with something else. And the pigs are very needy. They need a lot of cuddles… don’t get a lot done. And then we have crafters who make things for us, people who could help us fundraise, you know…
T.J. 42:06
Admin!
Liz 42:07
Admin.
T.J. 42:08
Paperwork.
Liz 42:08
I mean a lot of admin. Yeah.
T.J. 42:11
Yeah.
Rob 42:12
But I’m thinking there are people all over the world who might be listening to this.
Liz 42:16
Give us some money. That would be amazing!
Rob 42:19
How do they give you some money?
Liz 42:21
So we have on our Face(book)… on our website… our bank details are on there. It’s on Kofi.
Rob 42:28
What is Kofi? I’ve never heard of Kofi.
Liz 42:30
It’s K O F I and we’re Full of Joy Animal Sanctuary Kofi. And you can give us money monthly or you can give us donations one off and every penny goes to the animals. We don’t… We’re all volunteers. We don’t use the money for admin. We don’t use the money for anything else other than just feed and, you know, medical bills and house animals.
Rob 42:53
I bet your bills are quite high. Aren’t they?
Liz 42:57
Very high. Yes. And we’re also doing a sponsorship aren’t we… sponsor pigs, sponsor individual animals. Yeah. The bills are astronomical.
All 43:09
They keep coming. Yeah.
T.J. 43:11
You just think that you can save some money for a new… like our stable block is… it’s like 30 years old so we keep patching it up, but at some point it’s going to need to be rebuilt from the bottom up instead of from the top down… which it is at the moment. And yeah, at some point we’re going to have to figure how we’re going to pay for that.
Liz 43:38
Yeah, we don’t know how we’ll pay for that.
T.J. 43:40
No, So we just repair it. But yeah.
Liz 43:45
We have lots of different membership tiers. So every… we say like £3 is amazing. That buys us a bag of carrots and we go right up to like £25 … for like bigger bags of feed and things like that. And then we do get people who, you know, are incredibly generous and give us monthly, monthly money, which means that we can plan ahead. And that’s really useful.
Rob 44:09
So that’s on Kofi is it?
Liz 44:13
That’s on Kofi and on our website and on Facebook and on Instagram. There’s links in the… I’m not very good at this but in the bio bit at the top. There’s links to all our… to all of that and to our bank account.
Rob 44:30
Brilliant.
T.J. 44:32
And if anybody is local to where we are.
Rob 44:34
Well do you want to say where you are? Because I thought you didn’t want people knowing where you are.
Liz 44:40
Well, again, we’re getting a bit braver. We were very worried that… because the other thing that we didn’t talk about is that people dump animals on you. So we have had cockerels dumped and things like that and it’s… you want to do the best, so you don’t want these animals just dumped on you. But yeah, we’ve even got a sign coming to say who we are and where we are. because… we’ve just decided we can’t… Lots of people know where we are now and who we are, so we’re just going to be braver and hope the abuse doesn’t get too much. I know that you look at us like but the abuse can be so bad. But we are Full of Joy Animal Sanctuary in Todmorden, West Yorkshire.
T.J. 45:21
Near the Great Rock.
Liz 45:21
Near the Great Rock
Rob 45:23
You really have given away your location.
Liz 45:26
Gone for it. Yeah. That’s fine.
T.J. 45:28
But yeah, the animals always… I mean, there’s the big animal feeds, but actually the vegetables is a big layout as well because all the animals eat vegetables, apples, carrots.
Liz 45:43
Yeah.
T.J. 45:43
The pigs love a watermelon in summer and pumpkins in autumn.
Liz 45:49
So we try and get, you know, people if they have veg shops and things like that… if they’ve got any left over, sometimes we get some of them. It’d be good if anyone’s listening know… Has some.
T.J. 46:01
Links.
Liz 46:01
Has some links. Yea.
Rob 46:03
Right. Well I don’t think that there’s anything, I mean we could go on for ages, but I think this is a good point to end. So thank you very much both of you.
Liz 46:15
Thank you.
T.J. 46:15
Thank you.
Rob 46:16
Yeah, I’ve really enjoyed you talking. It’s been lovely.
T.J. 46:20
Thank you.
Liz 46:21
I hope it hasn’t been too negative. There are the joys as well.
All 46:26
A lot of joys in doing it. Yeah.
Rob 46:28
Yeah. Well I think you’ve been realistic about it.
Liz 46:32
Realistic. Yeah.
Rob 46:33
Yeah.
T.J. 46:33
I think you have to be, if you don’t do it with your eyes open then it’s not, it’s not all the pretty pictures that you see on Instagram. Yeah.
Liz 46:45
People say, “oh I want to open a sanctuary”. And then they go, “How do you go on holiday”? You don’t go on holiday. How do you go for day trips? Yeah, you don’t you know, this is an absolute lifestyle choice you. You don’t don’t ever have these things, you don’t.
Rob 47:00
How did you get on in the snow, by the way?
T.J. 47:03
Just walked.
Liz 47:03
We walked up. So we’ve also got… because we don’t have… one of the things we need to try and raise money for is proper transport.
Because we didn’t, we were carrying bales of hay down the road to the sheep. So that was quite hard work. But we did it, It was fine. The sheep were very grateful.
T.J. 47:22
And we make sure that we’ve got in a lot of hay.
Liz 47:27
We really prepare
T.J. 47:28
and we really prepare. So we’ve got enough sacks of food that will do us… you know what I mean like a couple of weeks.
Liz 47:36
Yeah.
T.J. 47:38
So if, you know, if it lasted longer than a couple of weeks, then we’d probably be more in an issue. But we, we’ve kind of sorted out so that we have got…
Liz 47:50
We have water in buckets in proper, you know, in water containers at the back of the sheds ready to go because it’s so they don’t freeze. We just get everything… we watch, we watch the weather very carefully don’t we? Because we’re not on mains here.
T.J. 48:05
We’re just on rainwater.
Liz 48:06
Yeah.
Rob 48:07
Rainwater, not even spring water?
Liz 48:09
No rainwater.
T.J. 48:11
We have got a spring. So if anybody’s up for helping us figure out…
Liz 48:14
Helping us to tap into it.
T.J. 48:15
Yeah. Properly. That would be wonderful.
Rob 48:18
Interesting.
Liz 48:19
We can’t afford a borehole or anything like that. Most people up here have a borehole. But what we do is collect the rainwater through the year and save it for when it’s going to freeze or the summer. Yeah.
T.J. 48:31
You can never collect enough water.
Liz 48:32
No. You can never collect enough water.
Rob 48:41
Thanks again to TJ and Liz for such an illuminating discussion during what really was the calm before the storm. I’ve contributed to the crowdfunding that’s needed to rebuild the accommodation after Storm Éowyn. I hope many of you listeners will too. Just go to w w w dot Full hyphen of hyphen Joy hyphen Animal hyphen Sanctuary dot co dot uk or the episode notes where you can find a link that will lead to the site where you can make a donation. The episode notes also include the Full of Joy, contact and social media information, along with how you can become a member through regular giving on the Kofi platform. This episode is Time is Sliding’s participation in the 2025 Podcasthon. You can go to Podcasthon dot org to listen to more voices coming together to amplify the work of charities and inspire change.
I’ve been, and still am, Rob Baylis, host of Time, is Sliding. For better or worse, all production work and music has been by me. You can find out more about the podcast at Time is Sliding. That’s all one word. Time is Sliding Dot Earth as in the thing that we’re on. Past episodes and transcripts are accessible from there, too.
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