Staff Reporter
The next instalment of Easy Horse Care Rescue Centre, and what a story we have!
I’m sure all of you will have seen the horrendous floods that have hit our area.
It started with a gota fria – the third that we’ve had this year – and because of it, the Segura river burst its banks, sending people and properties underwater.
Houses were lost, cats, dogs, horses and ponies – hundreds of animals have drowned.
But by some miracle, the river didn’t flood Rojales, where we’re based. If it had, we would now be the Easy Fish Care Rescue Centre.
Our problem was the clouds. We were pumping out rainwater for three days and three nights just to keep it out of the feed room and keep the water levels down in the fields.
We had to make it as comfortable for the animals during the torrential thunder, lightning and the downpours we experience.
Anyway, we’re out of the crisis now, and we’re some of the lucky ones that survived. All of our 120 horses, ponies, donkeys and other animals survived – apart from four baby peacocks from the last column, sadly.
Now that the craziness is calming down, we’ve had our first call from the police asking us to collect a donkey.
This will be the start of many calls we’re expecting very soon, but it doesn’t solve an even bigger problem: there’s hardly any forage left in Spain to keep the thousands of animals that depend on it alive.
The main reason is that 78% of the ‘alfalfa’ forage feed is sold to the Middle East and China, leaving only 22% for animals here.
Because of the floods, most of this has been lost anyway, so what in the world are we going to do?
As reported in the Olive Press, we’ve been aided by a fantastic Norwegian who’s working with German farmers to donate articulated lorry-loads of forage to bring to Spain.
The first load should be over from Germany some time next week, but although the forage is being donated free of charge, the cost of transportation is huge – €3,300 for the first load alone.
However, more Germans from a golfing organisation based in our area have amazingly donated €2,000 towards the costs.
Temporarily, we should be okay, but we need to raise more funds to cover the cost of more imports of forage to Spain.
Not only will this keep our animals that we have NOW stay alive, but also those abandoned that we’ll have to go out and rescue from hunger, or worse.
This is really going to be the most challenging times of our 11-year journey so far.
