Women Know How to Keep Unwanted Animals Down on the Farm

Some people like living on a farm for the soothing certainties to be found there. Corn grows, ducks fly, hens roost.

But take a closer look at a backyard farm here and you’ll see a cast of animals no one ever mentioned in Old MacDonald. There’s a duck named Dancer, crippled by arthritis, a flightless Canadian goose with an amputated wing, and a hen with a deformed foot who requires a custom-designed roost to stay perched.

Disabled animals are part of almost any barnyard. If folks rarely see them, that’s because they’re often “culled out,” a euphemism for being killed. Lynn Grizzard saw this happening when she worked as a Santa Paula veterinarian’s assistant. When clients brought in disabled animals, they were usually put to sleep or sold at auction for meat.

Grizzard, 32, began taking the doomed animals home with her--a brain-damaged cat here, a broken-billed duck there.

“It was hard to say no to anyone,” she said.

Now Grizzard and her partner Devon Finnegan, 26, are ringleaders of what may become a burgeoning disabled animals’ liberation movement. As proprietors of the Grinegan Farm for Differently-Abled Animals, the two declare that a disabled duck that cost 75 cents has as much right to live as a healthy thoroughbred racehorse. As Finnegan said, “A life’s a life.”

Sanitarium for Disabled Critters

When the two acquired their first charges three years ago, among them a trio of cats named Peace, Freedom and Justice, their rented house was not set up as a sanitarium for disabled critters; and the two didn’t have the money to fix it up. (Finnegan is a special education teacher and Grizzard now works at an exotic bird farm in Ojai.) They made do, however. They found a bunch of wire; someone donated chain-link fencing . . . and the animals kept arriving.

The two are now housemothers to two goats, three dogs, three cats, six chickens, one guinea hen, 11 ducks, five rabbits, two cockateels, a cockatoo, a Canadian goose and an Egyptian goose, an Amazon parrot and a blackbird that one of the cats hunted down, and which is currently convalescing in the bathroom.

Expenses have grown with the increasing head count. Chicken feed alone costs Finnegan and Grizzard about $100 a month; and their gas bill has soared since they have been keeping the house warmer than usual for their Moluccan cockatoo, Baby. (Baby has beak-and-feather syndrome, a disease that weakens her feathers so that they break off and provide little warmth. The condition is usually fatal in cockatoos, which can live to 70 years or more.)

Grizzard and Finnegan survive the lean months by eating vegetables from their garden supplemented with large portions of rice.

“We may not have a lot of money to go to the grocery store, but the animals always eat,” said Grizzard. “They eat us out of house and home, but there are compensations,” she added. “I have never known an animal to be quite as entertaining as a duck.”

On a sunny Saturday, while other people play softball or go to the movies, these two take their amusement in the backyard. There’s a new duck pond with a specially constructed access ramp for the mobility-impaired fowl. The farm proprietors never seem to tire of watching Dancer waddle up the ramp, her feet slapping noisily, then perch on the floating platform before slipping off into the water.

Duck That Charges Dogs

Elsewhere in the yard, they might see Daffodil Bill, a duck, charge after any dog that has the misfortune to wander into the enclosure. (Daffodil Bill lost half his bill in a fight, and since then has shown an affinity for attacking others. Because of the bill deformity, he requires a deep dish for dining.)

Or, if Bill is feeling docile, they might watch Mime, the lame guinea hen (her face is masked with white like a mime) spar with the king of the chickens, Banana, one of the able-bodied animals on the farm.

Seriously impaired animals such as Pepper, a Plymouth Rock hen, are kept in separate enclosures because chickens will sometimes attack an injured animal, Grizzard said. Pepper has a twisted leg, the result of a birth defect. Her foot points in the wrong direction, and she drags it about.

Grizzard said they intend to shell out funds for an operation to have the leg amputated (they have spent as much as $1,000 in veterinary bills for a single animal) but until then, Pepper gets along on daily doses of human small talk and affection.

Pepper is one of many residents the farm got from the Santa Paula feed and supply store, the Mill. It’s the place where local farmers take unwanted animals to be adopted. Grizzard said the clerks at the Mill are always happy to see the Grinegan Farm duo approaching because if they have a particularly hard-to-place animal on hand, they know Lynn and Devon are likely to take it home.

Many of Grinegan Farm’s animals were abandoned because

people weren’t willing to put out the care and cash it sometimes takes to keep an injured or disabled animal alive. “Who’s going to pay to take a sick duck to the vet?” Grizzard asked. “People don’t take ducks to the vet.”

Grizzard routinely urges acquaintances not to get an animal of any kind unless they are willing to pay what it costs to take care of it. She also cautions parents who might buy their kids a baby duck this Easter not to release the duck at a lake when the child tires of it. Some of Grizzard’s charges are the offspring of domesticated and wild ducks. Such cross-bred ducks are unable to fly, and cannot survive in the wild.

During the week, Grizzard and Finnegan are up at 5 a.m. to get the farm chores done before they both leave for work. They change the water trays, and distribute breakfast--duck feed for the ducks, hay for the goats and veggies for the rabbits. They collect any eggs laid overnight, and hand-feed Baby, the cockatoo. She likes applesauce and corn puffs.

Weekend Chores

On weekends when there’s more time to devote to farming, Grizzard and Finnegan--sometimes with the help of a few friends--rake the pens, Rototill the land, trim the goats’ hoofs (once they had a buck-toothed rabbit whose teeth had to be trimmed weekly) and lavish attention on the clan.

Every night they herd all 11 ducks into a pen for protection from coyotes. “We’re duck herders from way back,” Grizzard said.

Eventually, the two hope to save enough money to buy a piece of land and build the Grinegan Farm for Differently-Abled Animals into the kind of haven they can only dream of now. Maybe then Dancer, the arthritic duck, will have a real pond to splash in instead of a glorified washtub, and Mask, the Russian Muscovoy duck with a deformed wing, will have the space to live out his days in dignity.

“We’re not really a foster home,” Grizzard said. “This is the end of the line for a lot of these guys. Our purpose is just to give them a place to be.”

Grinegan Farm’s address is P.O. Box 1048, Ojai, Calif. 93023. The proprietors say they can ‘ t adopt any more dogs and they don’t have accommodations for big animals like horses, but other applicants will be at least considered.