These are Somali Wild Asses – a sub-species of African Wild Asses – that used to live right across northern Africa. Now they are critically endangered and only live in the arid plains and mountainous areas of Somalia, Ethiopia, and Eritrea in East Africa.

In the wild, they live in small herds of about a dozen animals. That’s because the terrain where they live is so poor in nutrition that it will only support small herds.

We photographed these in captivity at Marwell Zoo here in England where they are part of an international breeding program. It may be their only hope safeguard against becoming extinct.

If you liked this, why not click to like us on Facebook, and/or to tweet about us, and/or recommend us on Stumbleupon, and on click the Google +1 button. Every click helps

Wild Asses At Play is a post from the Quillcards Blog

No related posts.

We have now completed the redesign and upgrade of the main Quillcards site, and it is now ‘live’.

So here is a rundown of the changes and improvements.

Speedier Loading Time With The Cloud

We have speeded up the page loading time by hosting the images in the Cloud with Amazon S3 Cloud hosting.

This enables us to take advantage of Amazon’s powerful servers worldwide to deliver images to our Web pages.

However, we are only hosting our images in the Cloud.

All of the other data on our site is stored securely and privately on our Web server.

Google Fonts For Greetings

We have also implemented the Google font Rancho for our greetings.

Google fonts are located ‘in the Cloud’ on Google’s servers – which means that they are available and readable on an even greater range of systems from PCs to tablets to smart phones.

The Rancho font replaces the Tiza font that we have used until now. Because ‘Tiza’ is not available as a Google font, the odds are stacked against continuing to use it so we have decided to make the change at this time.

Also, Rancho is a sophisticated but friendly font that fits the available space where the greetings appear on our cards better than Tiza did.

A Quillcards Ecard

Zippier Browsing

As you will see when you head over to the main Quillcards site, the layout of the home page is now somewhat different.

The basic structure remains the same – in themes such as ‘The Natural World’ and ‘Quotations World’, etc.

And the categories within the themes – such as ‘Animals’, ‘Flowers’, ‘Inspiration’, ‘Romantic Love’ etc. – also remain the same.

And as before, you can browse the themes and categories in the sidebar.

However, now the site is quicker to browse.

That is because we have replaced the accordion (that opened and closed in the different themes when you clicked them) with a faster method of browsing.

Now you simply hover your cursor up and down the list in the sidebar, and then click on the category you are searching for.

Try it, it’s a snap!

A Visual Overview Of All Of The Categories

The other main change we have made is to the thumbnails on the home page.

Instead of the thumbnails on the homepage showing the cards from just one category, they now show a single ‘key’ image from all the categories to give you a complete overview of what’s on offer.

Once you click on a key thumbnail, you will see all the ecards for that category – just like before.

We think this layout gives a more representative view of the site for first-time and repeat visitors and users alike.

Changes To The Layout Of The Greetings On The Compose Page

We have made several changes to the ‘Compose’ page where you put together your ecards.

You will now find that all the greetings are listed down the page rather than being in a drop-down list, which makes them easier and quicker to browse.

The Background Colors Are Right There As You Write

Like before, when you are on the ‘Compose’ page and you want to change the background color – you simply click on the color picker to open it.

Then you choose your color, which changes the horizontal color strip to whatever you have selected.

However, now the same color appears on either side of the page right there in the browser window on the ‘Compose’ page – making it easier to see how the final ecard will look.

Send Your Cards To Up To Five People At One Time

Perhaps the biggest change of all in the ‘Compose’ page is that you can now you can send your cards to up to five people at one time.

And you can add the recipients one after the other straight from your Contacts list or save new contacts to your Contacts list right there.

Care-Free Tracking

When you send a card to multiple recipients, you will be sent individual emails to tell you when any or all of your recipients (i.e., up to five people) open up their cards.

This is all done automatically by the Quillcards system.

Searching For Specific Ecards Within The Site

We have removed the right-hand sidebar.

Now when you want to search for a particular card, just hover on ‘Ecard Search’ in the navigation bar. This will bring up the sub-menus of ‘Search By Author’, ‘Search By Quotation’, and ‘Search By Word’.

Searching by word brings up all the cards that we have tagged with a particular descriptive word.

Once you find a card tagged with that word and you click on the image itself, you have two options: You can either send the image as an ecard, or you can save the image to your favorites.

Another new feature that we have included is that you will now see the name of the category beneath the name of the image.

Click on the category name and it will take you straight to that category.

Favorite Images

Similarly with your ‘Favorite Images’ in ‘My Quillcards’ – these now have both the name of the image below the thumbnail and the category where the image is located.

So now you can quickly find and go to the page where the image is located.

Our New ‘Charity Policy’ Page Display

We have updated our Charity Policy page with the logos and links to the three causes that we support and which promote our ecards in their sites.

We hope to support other causes and to similarly display their logos in the future.

Greeting Cards Coming Soon

Our new Quillcards layout is the first part of our new design. The second part is to implement the Quillcards Store where we will be selling greeting cards and reintroducing the sale of prints.

We will place a prominent link to the store right at the top of the home page once the store is ‘open for business.’

Please Support Us On Facebook And Google+

Last but not least, in the footer of every page of Quillcards we have added links to our Facebook and Google+ pages.

Please consider clicking the ‘Like’ button and/or the ‘+1′ button on the main site to show you like what we do – we would appreciate that!

What Do You Think?

We hope you enjoy our redesign and upgrade. Please leave a comment here to let us know what you think of our efforts.

You can reach the main site from here at any time by clicking the link in the navigation bar at the top of this page, or by clicking Quillcards here.

A New Look And An Upgrade For Quillcards is a post from the Quillcards Blog

Related posts:

1. Quillcards Blog Chosen As A Lonely Planet Featured Site
2. Ecards And Art Prints: What’s New At Quillcards
3. New Ecard Features In My Quillcards
4. New Quillcards Ecards: December 2011
5. 962 Quillcards Ecards For The New Year & Beyond

Cuts Of Beef

A couple of days ago, Tamara and I passed this life-size model of a cow outside a restaurant. We just didn’t like the way the cow was shown jointed.

What you can’t see is that around the other side of the model, the cow is shown in its ‘natural’ state with its hide intact.

Obviously it was an advertisement designed to attract diners, and not a guide for trainee butchers showing them how to joint meat.

Tamara and I knew exactly why we didn’t like the advertisement. It was because it denied dignity to the cow, even though it was a plastic cow and there were no real cows around to see it and be dismayed at the thought of their future.

We walked on a little way and then turned back so we could photograph the model. As we were photographing it, it struck me that the problem wasn’t with the diagram of how the cow was going to be cut up.

The problem was that I had registered that I didn’t like it and then I had just walked on – at least for a little while.

I’m not a vegetarian, so I can hardly say that I’m opposed to the idea of killing animals for food per se. But equally I am aware of the indignities we suffer on animals while they are alive.

And the root of my objection to this advertisement is that it is yet one more way that our feelings are encouraged to be deadened so that we objectify living animals and see them as a kind of ‘pre-dead’ meat.

And that can translate into a lack of care when we see farm animals being treated inhumanely.

The Continuum Of Care

It’s a continuum.

At one end are people who will not wear leather belts or leather shoes because they do not want to be part of the chain of demand for leather that means that somewhere a cow will be treated badly while it is alive, or indeed that it will be killed at all.

Further along the continuum are people who will feel there is something inhumane and degrading about stapling plastic tags through a cow’s ears, no matter what arguments of animal health and farming husbandry are raised.

Cows With Ear Tags

Then there are those who would simply want farm animals to treated humanely while they are alive.

And at the other end of the continuum there are those who, without a thought, will shove cows into stalls just big enough to contain them and hens into tiny battery cages and leave them there to rot during their entire lives.

While Looking At Some Of Our Photographs

I was originally prompted to write this article when Tamara and I were looking back through some of our photographs, choosing images for our upcoming range of greeting cards.

One photograph we came across was of the cow with the tags through its ears. I took the photo at a farm where animals are treated very well. The cows were in a circular feeding station at the time, but they spent most of their days grazing in the nearby fields.

The other photograph we came across that contrasted with the first, was this one of sheep and ponies on Dartmoor taken during our visit there in the summer of 2010.

On Dartmoor

Compassion In World Farming

It got me thinking about how I had been affected by what I had learned through our involvement with Compassion In World Farming (CIWF) – a charity whose work Tamara has been following for five or six years.

CIWF is a pragmatic organisation that campaigns peacefully to end all cruel factory farming practices worldwide.

Recently, a new CIWF group started in Edinburgh, so we went to the first meeting held at the house of the local organiser, Gary Waterall.

We discussed the plan to have a booth at one of the shopping centres on the outskirts of Edinburgh. The idea was that we would hand out leaflets and other information and be ready to answer questions from passers by.

Except that I felt spectacularly unready to answer any questions about the treatment of farm animals.

Tamara knew much more than I did about the plight of some factory farmed animals and about the work of CIWF. However, she was also conscious of the responsibility of being able to adequately answer questions from interested people.

So she requested some fact sheets and videos from CIWF headquarters and when they arrived we divided them up and started working our way through them.

Reading about factory farming and the treatment of the treatment of hens, cows, and pigs here in the UK, in the European Union, and in other countries made a big impression on me.

Here I just want to talk about dairy cows and laying hens.

Dairy Cows

I learned that dairy cows are selectively bred so that they weigh about three times what a typical cow would have weighed in Elizabethan times.

As I alluded to in the title to this article, they are basically giant udders with a cow on the end.

A ‘normal’ cow gives about 4 litres (1 U.S. gallon) of milk per day. Selectively bred Holstein-Friesians give more than 22 litres (6 U.S. gallons) of milk per day over three forced lactations, and then they are sent off for slaughter.

While they are producing milk, factory farmed dairy cows are kept in a low movement environment with little or zero grazing and fed a low fibre, high-energy diet that is unsuited to their stomach and intestinal systems but gives a high milk yield.

And this is in a good environment; Their lives are much worse in some industrialised systems.

Laying Hens

Caged laying hens get no natural daylight. They sit under a dim artificial light to discourage activity and aggression and they are exposed to as long a period of light in each 24 hours as possible to encourage them to believe it is summer when they naturally lay more eggs.

In the European Union, hens must get a minimum of 8 hours of darkness in every 24 hours.

Before the introduction of enriched cages in the European Union in January 2012, many hens lived in barren cages which are just hard floors with no perches and no nest box.

Birds caged in barren cages cannot peck, scratch for food, nest, flap their wings, or have a dust bath.

As of January 1, 2012, barren cages are banned in the European Union. Enriched cages have a straw floor and give a minimum of 750 cm² hen with 600 cm² of usable space. That is less than the size of a sheet of A4 paper or about nine inches by ten inches.

European Council Directive 99/74/EC specifies the following for enriched battery cages:

• Space – provision of at least 750 cm2 of cage area per hen, 600 cm2 of which shall be at least 45 cm high, and no cage shall have a total area that is less than 2000 cm2
• A nest
• Litter such that pecking and scratching are possible
• Perches – appropriate perches allowing at least 15cm (6 inches) length per hen
• Feed trough – supplying at least 12cm (8 inches) length per hen
• Drinkers – at least two nipple drinkers per cage
• Aisle width – at least 90cm (36 inches) between tiers of cages
• Claw shortening devices

Enriched cages have perches – but they are still just a few inches off the ground.

Enriched cages are better than barren cages. However, both put the bird in the box where it does nothing but sit and eat and pump out eggs at an unnatural rate until it is past its best, when it is killed.

The former Farm Animal Welfare Council (an advisory body to DEFRA – the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs in the UK) concluded in its 2007 report on enriched cages:

FAWC considers that all commercial systems of production for laying hens offer some compromise in terms of the hen’s welfare. However, well managed enriched cage systems are able to offer the potential for an acceptable balance between the requirements for the hen’s health and welfare, and public health, in combination with economic and environmental considerations.

Make of that what you will. To me the report says that hens are better off when they are not in cages, but what the heck – it’s not the worst choice…

Volunteering for CIWF

We spent a few hours in rotation with other volunteers at the shopping centre and spoke with people who were interested to learn about the work that Compassion In World Farming does.

It turned out that we were adequately prepared and able to talk to people and that we really needn’t have worried. The people we spoke to were sympathetic, concerned, and treated the matter seriously.

So the question we kept asking ourselves was how people who worked day after day with chickens shoved in battery cages could do so and not be affected by what they were doing.

We are not starry eyed and we do not have rose tinted spectacles, but we still wondered how people could look at animals and effectively treat them as ‘pre-dead’ produce.

The Movement For The Better Treatment Of…

Whether the subject is recycling, healthy eating, a fairer economic system, social justice, or the question of where the produce on the supermarkets comes from – it’s clear that there is a groundswell of public opinion that wants to push things towards a more humane system in whatever arena.

Some supermarkets in Britain have recognised this and have changed the source of the food they offer. They have made sure that they buy from sources that do not encourage the worst practises in factory farming.

So for me that take-away lesson on seeing the life-size, jointed plastic cow or browsing the supermarket shelves is not to gloss over the things that should halt me in my tracks.

I know that I should and must look at food packaging and make sure that I do my part to buy from sustainable sources that treat animals fairly. And I should continue campaigning for better farm practises.

If you want more information, contact Compassion In World Farming.

This is from The CIWF Food Business Awards – I have put the winners in bold for easy reading. If you are interested, you know where to shop and which supermarkets to avoid.

The Most Compassionate Supermarket Award is our most prestigious and goes to the retailer with the highest overall score in our Survey. Previous winners have included Marks and Spencer and the current winner, Waitrose.

The Best Volume Supermarket Award is given to the highest scoring retailer of the ‘Big 4’ supermarkets. The biggest UK retailers account for more than three quarters of the grocery market share making them hugely influential. Sainsbury’s have shown consistent commitment to farm animal welfare and are current holders of the title

The Most Improved Supermarket Award goes to the retailer making the largest gains in animal welfare since the previous survey. Previous winners have included Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and the current winners The Co-operative.

Know Your Labels

Finally, you may want to use the CIWF Know Your Labels guide next time you go shopping.

An Udder With A Cow On The End – Thoughts On Farm Animals is a post from the Quillcards Blog

Related posts:

1. Lambing At Hurries Farm In The Yorkshire Dales
2. Beatrix Potter’s Affable Animals
3. Beatrix Potter’s Affable Animals
4. Canaries In The Coal Mines: Thoughts For Endangered Species Day

Mauritius And Mangoes Equals Magic In This Year’s MasterChef

I figured 29-year-old finalist Shelina Permalloo would win MasterChef 2012 last night: Her dishes so heavily influenced by her native Mauritius including mangoes aplenty, whacks of color and reams of spices with her personality infused throughout were just the ticket for Permalloo to beat the rest of the crew.

Judges Gregg Wallace and John Torode pointed out these elements in this winner’s cooking repeatedly throughout the weeks that the series aired with palpable and often gleeful exuberance.

Therefore, it was no great shock at all when Permalloo won. However, from what we witnessed regarding her culinary talents and skills, I think she has ‘done good’ and she got her just rewards.

Kudos To The Cooks

I have been watching MasterChef for years now, and no matter how hammy it may get at times (and besides the fact that the voice of the narrator always strikes me as artificially feminine and breathy, as if she’s trying to be sexy over green beans et al!) – still: It’s a winning combination to view, and it’s got an educational component to boot that I appreciate.

So here’s a salute to all of the eight amateur cooks who cooked their hearts out in each challenge, and to the mentor chefs with their Michelin stars and many years of cookery knowledge who contributed their expertise to the series.

Albeit as only an armchair observer, I feel I also learned some valuable tips throughout the stream of the series.

The Beauty Of Basic Foodstuff - A Quillcards Ecard

Whence Comes MasterChef, Eh?

It was the Englishman Francis Roddam aged 65 from County Durham who created the format for MasterChef, as I have discovered.

Described as a screenwriter, film director, businessman, publisher, and television producer from the late 1960s onwards, Roddam is well known for producing the formats for Auf Wiedersehen, Pet which aired in the 1980s and early 2000s as well as for a number of other award-winning TV dramas and documentaries in the UK and USA.

MasterChef, however, has become a worldwide TV phenomenon. It’s shown in 150 countries worldwide including 20 locally produced versions.

In Australia, for example, it is the most watched TV series. Because I spent a few months in Australia during the 1990s when I was living in South Korea, this factual tidbit also interests me.

Likewise, I see that France, India, Israel, and my native USA – all countries where I have greatly enjoyed the food – have MasterChef competitions.

I for one think it would be grand fun roaming about to tune in to get a taste of these various competitions as well if one is fortunate enough to be in the country when they’re on the tube.

Relaxing At A Cafe In Lyon - A Quillcards Ecard

My Facebook Factor

Seeing that ‘six degrees of separation’ is often in operation in my personal universe for some reason, a friend of mine on Facebook is good friends with one of the eight MasterChef 2012 contestants. So I took the opportunity to send a Facebook message to this contestant.

He graciously responded, and so I found myself particularly riveted to the TV whenever he was on camera. I don’t want to mention him by name for privacy’s sake, but his inclusion in the competition made it all the nicer for me to watch.

Child In Need India (CINI)

And now today I want to share another personal connection with MasterChef that has a far-reaching and serious element.

But first, some information about Child In Need India – or CINI, as it is commonly known.

As its strap line under its logo on line states, CINI’s logic is ‘help the mother, help the child’. It describes its mission as

focus[ing] on sustainable improvement in Health, Nutrition, Education and the Protection for women and children in need. It aims to overcome the barriers of poverty, caste and gender that affect the lives of the poor and vulnerable in India.

In India, helping mothers and children at risk is particularly meaningful because around 6,000 children die every day in the country.

That translates into the staggering statistic that every fifteen seconds, one child dies in India. Moreover, according to a 2009 UNICEF statistic – Indian women are 80 times more likely to die in childbirth than here in the UK.

Women In Conversation - A Quillcards Ecard

MasterChef 2010 Dhruv Baker Heads CINI’s ‘Cook For Life’ Initiative

MasterChef comes into this mix because to mark Mother’s Day which falls this Sunday here in the UK, CINI has created its ‘Cook For Life’ initiative with the help of another MasterChef figure – namely 36-year-old Dhruv Baker who won the MasterChef 2010 title.

Baker was born in Mexico, where he lived until the age of four when his family moved to India.

He has reflected on his website about how deeply influenced he was by “the cuisines and culinary wonders of these very different cultures.”

Meanwhile on CINI’s website, Dhruv explained his drive to connect with their efforts:

Having lived in India for over ten years and having seen how vitally important campaigns such as CINIs ‘Cook For Life’ initiative are, I am absolutely delighted to be involved.

Baker and CINI are encouraging people to cook a meal for family and friends with the intention that a donation for the meal will be passed on to CINI.

So if you want to get in on this charitable act, click here to view and download CINI’s exclusive recipe cards created by Dhruv.

A Personal Impression

I remember when Dhruv was on MasterChef. I cannot recall the details as it was back in 2010. However, I do still recall that Dhruv had an earnest sparkle in his eye and that a sprightly zest for life came through in his personality.

So I’m pleased as punch for CINI that he has lent his cooking expertise to call on cooks to prepare a meal with an aim to donating to CINI to help improve the lives of women and children in India.

Sir Mark Tully, An Exceptional Journalist Steeped In The Indian Culture

Born in Calcutta, India in 1935, Sir William ‘Mark’ Tully is also lending his support to CINI this Mother’s Day weekend.

Tully worked for the BBC for 30 years, 20 years of which he held the position of Chief of Bureau for BBC, New Delhi.

Although he resigned from that BBC position in 1994, Tully has worked as a freelance journalist and broadcaster based in New Delhi since that time.

He is currently the regular presenter of the weekly BBC Radio 4 program ‘Something Understood’. The BBC describes him as being ‘incomparable’ among foreign correspondents, informing readers that he was also awarded the OBE and was recently knighted for his outstanding career.

The BBC also points out that Tully is exceptional because he has been awarded the highly esteemed Padma Shri Award from the President of India for his writing and reporting on India for more than 25 years.

A writer drawn to empathetic portraits of the Indian culture told from the point of view of the poor, Tully attracts about a million listeners every Sunday when he presents the spiritually-rooted ‘Something Understood’ program which includes music, poetry, prose, and conversation.

Pilgrims Talking In Haridwar - A Quillcards Ecard

Listen To The Broadcast This Sunday On BBC Radio 4

Tune in to BBC Radio 4 this Sunday, March 18th when CINI will broadcast an appeal read by Tully at 7:55 a.m. and 9:26 p.m. and the following Thursday, March 22nd at 3:27 p.m.

Incredible India

Back to my personal experiences: I have always been drawn to India since I was a young child growing up in the USA.

Although she never visited India, my late mother used to talk about its exoticism, a perspective that was reinforced by various English novels that I read from childhood onwards where India was often painted in wondrous and inviting tones.

Fast forward to about six years ago when I was looking for an organization for whom I could volunteer. I heard about CINI, I was impressed by their work, and so I appreciated the opportunity to volunteer by editing material for them.

Because I had to devote more time to other things, however, I stopped that volunteer work for them a while back. However, I kept in touch with them. Then about two years ago, David and I traveled in northern India for seven weeks. It was an eye-popping experience that matched if not exceeded my imaginings about the place.

We have written extensively here on this blog of ours about our experiences, so put in ‘India’ in the search box here if you wish to bring up titles of our posts. And naturally I also had CINI in mind when thinking about India, so our articles include the one I wrote last year about CINI called Help Bring Attention To Child In Need India This Mother’s Day.

Quillcards’ CINI Mother’s Day Ecards

One thing led to another as time went on, and then at Mother’s Day last year as part of our ‘Ethical Causes’ range, we at Quillcards created five CINI ecards like this one to support the charity’s vitally important cause:

Child In Need India - A Quillcards Ecard

CINI has featured our ecards in the Get Involved section of their website.

You can send one or as many ecards as you wish for free either via CINI’s page or through the Free Ecards page on our main site.

So along with CINI’s ‘Cook 4 Life’ and its BBC Radio 4 appeal, we hope that you will click here and send these ecards this Mother’s Day and throughout the rest of the year to help spread the word even more about CINI’s great work.

REFERENCES
Child In Need India (CINI)
Wikipedia: Francis Roddam
MasterChef Winner 2010: Dhruv Baker
Wikipedia: Mark Tully
BBC – Radio 4 People: Mark Tully
BBC – BBC Radio 4 Programmes – Radio 4 Appeal, Child in Need India

A MasterChef Winner & BBC Radio 4 Help Child In Need India (CINI) is a post from the Quillcards Blog

Related posts:

1. Help Bring Attention To Child In Need India This Mother’s Day
2. Selling Flowers At Four: Child Poverty In Varanasi
3. The Itimad Ud Daulah in Agra, India
4. The Ecards From Our India Trip Are Now On Line
5. Both Ways Around The Roundabout: Traffic In India

Ewe

Barefoot And Pregnant In A Barn

Tamara and I went to a farm near Edinburgh yesterday where we saw a mixed flock of expectant ewes standing in a barn. They were panting in measured breaths, waiting for labour to begin.

The sense of expectation in the air was palpable as the ewes stood there patiently, looking as though they were coping and putting up with a rising tide of discomfort.

They were also very friendly, coming over and accepting tidbits from us. We felt we were doing double duty – not only feeding them and being friendly, but also distracting their attention for a few minutes from the business of waiting.

Tamara and I have spent hours watching sheep in the fields. Their gentle ruminations instil a sense of peace and wellbeing in us. Corny perhaps, but true.

Timing The Lambing Season

As I wrote in this article about advance planning for lambing in the Yorkshire Dales, farmers try to arrange things the previous year so that the lambs for the whole flock are born over a period of just a few days.

And when the flock comes together near the end of their pregnancies – as here in this barn – the hormones floating in the air encourage all the sheep to begin labour more or less together.

The hormones in the breeze probably also account for the slightly awestruck look in the faces of the sheep as they stand there.

Newborn Lamb

Ewe With Lambs

Postscript

We’ll make a close up version of the image at the top of this article and add it to the Animals section in our ecard collection.

Lambing In Scotland is a post from the Quillcards Blog

Related posts:

1. The Yorkshire Dales Visitor Guide Features Our Photograph
2. Lambing At Hurries Farm In The Yorkshire Dales
3. Sheep Ecards: Spending Time Under A Tree
4. Advance Planning For Spring Lambs In The Yorkshire Dales
5. Swallows and Nests