Category: Animals

Two startups help animals regain their lost mobility

,
Haris Kolios, founder of bio3dvet, with engineers Afroditi Papakonstantinou and Nikos Leontaris. The company manufactures innovative artificial limbs for animals with disabilities or mobility problems. Two small Greek companies are helping to provide solutions for animals with serious mobility issues. The more technologically advanced of the two, bio3dvet, designs and produces artificial limbs, some on 3D printers. A collaboration between engineers and veterinarians, it was founded in 2018 by Haris Kolios in the northwestern city of Ioannina. Its first major case involved a kitten with three amputated legs, gunshot injuries and infected wounds. Three years later it runs around the…
Continue Reading

Moving bees | Adventuresinbeeland’s Blog

,
A few weeks ago I moved my two little colonies in nuc boxes to a new location closer to home. I’d never had to move bees before, so asked other beekeepers for tips beforehand and as luck would have it the BBKA News that landed through my door that day had an article all about moving bees. The main thing with moving bees is make sure the bees can’t get out. Earlier in the day I had put ventilated travel screens on top of both nucs, then left their roofs resting on them just in case it rained (it didn’t).…
Continue Reading

Grand National 2023 reflections after debate over Aintree marathon resurfaces

,
Our man reflects on an extraordinary Grand National day where emotions run hot at Aintree for several reasons. Forget Making Plans for Nigel – Racing must be agile Coming up to 4.30pm on a sunny spring Saturday at Aintree and the area behind the main stand is abuzz. Lads in tight suits and lasses in tighter dresses gab away merrily and, as Simon Holt calls Midnight River home to seal a Dan Skelton double, a small, wrinkly figure clad in custard cords and brown trilby pulled down to his eyebrows strides briskly towards the paddock . And, just like that,…
Continue Reading

What Do We Owe Lab Animals?

,
When Lauren Strohacker received her second Covid-19 vaccine dose in the spring of 2021, she rejoiced. It meant she could see her friends again, go to concerts and live with far less fear that an infection might leave her physically or financially devastated. But it became a bittersweet memory. Not long after Ms. Strohacker, an artist based in Knox County, Tenn., returned home from the vaccination site, she read an article about monkeys used in testing Covid vaccines. “I thought, I’m afraid of a stupid needle,” she said. “And these animals have to deal with this all the time.” She…
Continue Reading

An unexpected arrival | Adventuresinbeeland’s Blog

,
I’d left some equipment behind in the old location I used to keep bees, and hadn’t got around to moving it yet. Some new visitors took advantage of this des res – a brood box with a few frames in, a floor, and an inspection board acting as a roof, all piled up on top of a load of empty equipment. They’re against a wall and have a hedge and trees on the other side, providing shelter from the Cornish rain, and – in the last few days – the Cornish sun! I was surprised at how large a swarm…
Continue Reading

Martha Nussbaum’s “Justice for Animals” takes ethics to wild extremes

,
Martha Nussbaum is a very, very big deal, the kind of philosopher who, when she publishes a book, makes waves well beyond the ivory towers of academia. Her new volume, Justice for Animals, plunges into the animal welfare debate, billing itself as a “revolutionary new theory” in how we humans think about other animals. Which makes it all the more surprising that, at its heart, her theory isn’t very revolutionary at all. Nussbaum, whom the New Yorker once described as “monumentally confident,” contends that pretty much everyone has been thinking about animals wrong — including animal lovers. She rejects the…
Continue Reading

Bees – off! | Adventuresinbeeland’s Blog

,
Some of my longer term readers may remember that I had bees in my chimney stack. This had turned into a tricky problem, with quotes of £4,000+ to remove them and reseal the chimney. It wasn’t even my fault (honestly!!) as when the swarm first moved in my own bees were based around four miles away. The bees just found me. Well, I found a solution! I joined a Facebook group called UK Bee Removers. Where I then noticed a lady called Molly from Bees Off based in Cornwall. I’m so pleased to have found someone local, who could do…
Continue Reading

Wolf killings are hitting farmers hard on the Slovenian-Austrian border

,
In the Austrian-Slovenian border region, livestock farmers say there’s been a dramatic increase in the number of animals killed by wolves. Last year, in the Carinthia region, four times more farm animals were killed by the predator than in the previous year. Farmers are entitled to government compensation. The problem is they have to be able to prove the killer is a wolf. The Slovenian farmer Matija Juven received only a small part of the designated compensation because the identification tags on his sheep were lost during the killing. “I only got paid the damage for four of the 17…
Continue Reading