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"Animal Escape Plan"


(2021)


According to the Federal Statistical Office of Germany, roughly 760 million livestock was slaughtered in 2019. A microscopic number of these animals manages to escape the statistic every year, sometimes in adventurous ways.

During the 2021, I travelled across Germany and Austria to meet these special escapees like Ferdinand, Hanni, Wolfgang, Joey, Halla and many more. I collected their stories and captured their personalities.

In both factory farming and the slaughter of so-called farm animals, Germany is sitting up at the top in Europe.

Most of the farm animal breeds up for slaughter and harvest have been developed by farmers and scientists over decades for efficiency’s sake. And it has left deep scars on the animal’s mental and physical health.

Ducks can't reproduce themselves anymore. The ability to hatch eggs has been bred out because it is no longer required. Sheep grow endless wool and won’t survive without the constant shearing from humans. Bull legs are too thin to carry the body. Cows are dehorned because it reduces bruising to other cows and injury towards farmers. Cows can live up to 20 years, but most only ever live between 5-6 years. Caged in automated cowsheds and perpetually observed by machines, they'll never get to see or touch the green meadows which adorn their milk packages. The cow's ability to bear calves and produce the expected amount of milk is a matter of life and death for them.

Most of these animals never reach their average lifespan. They are usually slaughtered in an abattoir or die due to overbreeding illnesses.

To keep public cognitive dissonance at bay, these animals are numbered but never named. This is so the consumer never has to face the reality of commercial farming, when shopping for their meats and dairies in the supermarkets.



Hanni was nine years old when she arrived at Butenland. She gave birth to eight calfs in order to give huge amounts milk. After she wasn’t able to get more calfs, and was not able to give enough milk, she already got an appointment for the slaughter house. Luckily before that she came to Butenland - the old cows home in northern Germany. Hanni became a full member of the herd after a short while at a meadow at the shore of the Nothern Sea. Boris & Kasimir. Their lives started in an incubator like 700 Millions chickens every year in Germany. They usually spend their short lives in huge breeding facilities with up to 41 thousands other chickens. After 29 to 42 days they are getting slaughtered. Because of the turbo way of breeding they already weigh up to 2,5 kilos which casts a dark shadow over the future life of survivors like Boris and Kasimir. By the way othe roosters from the egg production are getting shreddered directly after birth. Claudius Eddie lives with his friend Lilli in an abandoned bunker former GDR monitoring facility where now "Animal's Land". They are Mini Pigs like you often see on instagram and youtube and for their holders too difficult to handle coming from badly conditions. Karlo spent spent first 5 months with other 30 piglets in an experimental laboratory. Hanni was nine years old when she arrived at Butenland. She gave birth to eight calfs in order to give huge amounts milk. After she wasn’t able to get more calfs, and was not able to give enough milk, she already got an appointment for the slaughter house. Luckily before that she came to Butenland - the old cows home in northern Germany. Hanni became a full member of the herd after a short while at a meadow at the shore of the Nothern Sea. Rebecca, Manfred & Malo Viola comes from an experimental laboratory Cello (former Challenger) was a tournament horse born on the 18th July 1995. He had to halt his tournament career when he turned 18 years old. For a horse, he wasn’t very old. But for the horse sports scene, he was a problem. Cello had to regularly take strong painkillers. The constant transportation from venue to venue made him sick with emphysema, Cushing-syndrome, and burn out. Now, Cello gets regular cortisone and oxygen therapy in Butenland. He’s also sensitive to the sunlight in his old age. Ferdinand escaped from the slaughterhouse where he should have been killed with the other steers as the last one at that day. He was only eleven month old and small enough to turn around in the last second and run all the way out to the forest, where he was hiding for two weeks and finally found by the people of the Erdlingshof animal sanctuary in the Bavarian Forest. Steers are by-products of dairy industry and live very short until they are heavy enough to be slaughtered. Halla is a young polar fox coming from a fur farm in Poland. Animal liberation activists kidnaped her and brought to "Gut Weidensse", a former middle age knight yard. Polar foxes usually spend all their life in small a cage resting on wire and every november there is so called fur harvest. The foxes are going to be killed in a gasification or by electroshock into their sphinkters in order not to ruin their fur. Joey, a muscovy duck was found with three other ducklings not far from the sanctuary "let the animals live" in Brandenburg, which also used to be a duck farm before. Presumably they escaped from a duck feedlot in the neighborhood. They grew up und stood together until his sister and friend Phoebe was killed by a gunshot of an unknown person in June 2020. Now Joey stays alone. Felix Bonnie Flausch & Lisa come from an experimental laboratory Halla is a young polar fox coming from a fur farm in Poland. Animal liberation activists kidnaped her and brought to "Gut Weidensse", a former middle age knight yard. Polar foxes usually spend all their life in small a cage resting on wire and every november there is so called fur harvest. The foxes are going to be killed in a gasification or by electroshock into their sphinkters in order not to ruin their fur. Halla is a young polar fox coming from a fur farm in Poland. Animal liberation activists kidnaped her and brought to "Gut Weidensse", a former middle age knight yard. Polar foxes usually spend all their life in small a cage resting on wire and every november there is so called fur harvest. The foxes are going to be killed in a gasification or by electroshock into their sphinkters in order not to ruin their fur. Abdul Claudius Klara Fräulein Hasenbein, Emily, Boris & Kasimir Ramona Chaya Fräulein Hasenbein was saved from the very badly conditions at a rabbit fattening. Most of the animals were malnourished and sick. Now she lives with chickens, turkeys and some of their relatives at a former GDR monitoring army facility where now "Animal's Land" is based.




I visited the following animal rescues, which you also can support!

Lasst die Tiere Leben, Brandenburg
Land der Tiere, Mecklenburg
Erdlingshof, Bayern
Hof Sonnenweide, Burgenland
Butenland, Niedersachsen
Gut Weidensee, Thüringen





Animal Escape Plan Zine out now! (supported by Nikon)
      
                                                                           
                                                                    
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