Animal Cruelty is such an important and broad topic as there are many different forms of committing it; including hunting, animal testing and animal abuse. These are still not specific enough because within them there are multiple ways of committing animal cruelty. For example, hunting includes people hunting animals for their fur, bones and meat or hunting sports that either include dogs or people capturing or killing wild animals for their entertainment.

Animal testing includes confining animals in small cages and putting them in danger of chemicals and drugs that can result in damaging them permanently or even killing them.

Animal abuse is one of the biggest forms of animal cruelty as there are many people around the world that do it, whether it’s accidental or not. This also includes pets; there were approximately 102,363 stray dogs found and ‘picked up by the UK councils’ in 2014-15. This doesn’t come near the total of all the pets that are taken in by rescue centers in the UK. Animal abuse also happens within some livestock farms, the livestock doesn’t get the life they deserve before they get slaughtered and sold in shops. Obviously not all farms treat their animals with such low respect and actually give their livestock the freedom they deserve, before killing them. There are many farms all around the world and have been for many years serving people as a source of food, so I understand it's not something people will give up on as it is a part of most people's daily diet as well as the predators diet.

Unfortunately you can find farms around the world that treat animals horrifically and constantly abuse them. For example chickens are kept in small confined cages with very limited or even no freedom in life, then they are killed and sold for their meat. Many people either don’t know or simply don’t ever think about how the meat gets onto the shop shelves ready for them to buy; the reality is that the process is long and brutal.

I was directed to this farm, to take photographs of the animals for my art coursework. Being someone with big interests of wildlife photography, I was quite excited. However, I must state that personally the experience was about a 5 out of 10. It was quite a small farm considering how many types of animals it contained, and I did look at their website just before going there to roughly see what kind of animals are included. I must confirm that the actual farm was a slight disappointment.

Upon arriving, it turned out to be a farm for the younger generation, yet I still decided to enter. Walking around and looking at all the animals, I was taken aback at the appalling state of some of the cages. I don’t know how often they were cleaned but it was clear to me that it was not done often enough. I’m defiantly not saying that this farm doesn’t care for the animals at all but I could see that some were not kept in the best conditions.

The farm had a few livestock animals including three different breeds of pigs, sheep, goats and cows as well as horses, donkeys and lamas, each in separate enclosures. Most of the enclosures where quite small but it varied depending on what animals were kept inside.

The farm also had animals that are considered as pets, and different types of birds including peacocks. Unfortunately the birds’ cages were quite small and in bad conditions. The owls were all separated and had quite disgusting cages, but the peacocks were all kept in the same cage where they could barely fan their alluring tails.

I do hope that this farm can raise enough money to re construct the enclosures giving the animals a home they deserve.

Being a big animal lover I want to raise awareness as much as I can to, not necessarily stop animal farms in general, but stop those that treat their livestock with no respect and in harsh conditions. My ambition for the future is to work helping every type of animal and their welfare, from pets to livestock to wild animals.

By Paulina Tobola - Gumley House Convent School