Malley the Lamb — Be The Aternative

May, 2024

This is Malley. I named this little lamb just a few days ago, when some friends and I were finally able to rescue him and his mother, as well as another lamb and her mum, from a farm near where I live.

I named Malley after my 14-year-old Labrador, Malus, who I was told only last week by his vet that he likely won't make it until the end of summer.

Malus and I have walked through the same fields every day for over a decade and, every year, we've seen countless sheep come and go. As a vegan, of course, it never gets any easier. The thing is, the sheep the farmers keep in those fields, they've never once had lambs. They're just kept there for a few weeks, with no shelter, often up to their fleeces in mud, before they're sent off to slaughter.

So you can imagine my surprise when one day, a few weeks ago, I saw this little lamb come bouncing up to the electric fence, bleating all excitedly. I came to a stop. Naturally, my immediate instinct was pure joy. Momentarily, I was made up to see this sweet little baby, before the reality hit me. I looked around the field and, as I thought, he was the only lamb in a throng of grown sheep.

Everything in me just wanted to climb over the fence and take him, but how? It was broad daylight, a mile away from my highly inappropriate home, which had a flagged stone back yard. Besides that, I had an old, blind pooch with me who relies on me to be his guide, whose back legs often give way from under him. I had no hope of carrying a lamb away, undetected, that far, without significant difficulty.

So, I just stood and watched him for a few minutes. Distressed, I rang my mum and tearfully told her that an accidental lamb had been born and that I didn't know what to do. But of course, the answer came to me as my head cleared: I needed to ring the local "pixies" I knew. I didn't know how I was going to do it, but I was going to get him out of there, before he was noticed, ideally.

Over the next week or so, I reached out to several people who I knew would have the right contacts and, in the end, I found someone who was able to help me. Slowly but surely, things progressed and we found a family willing to take both him and his mum in.

Meanwhile, every day, I'd walk through those same fields with Malus. And I'd take photos of the as yet unnamed Malley, snuggled up to his mum. I'd smile when I saw him, and equally I'd fret. I'd fret that he'd be discovered by the farmer when they next came to fill up the automatic feeders. I was scared he'd be taken away.

On the day that it was arranged that we'd go get them, I walked Malus early I was meeting my friend for lunch that afternoon.

To my absolute horror I saw the slaughter trucks in the field, with the farm workers preparing to herd them into it. I rushed over and told them that there was an accidental lamb and that he and his mum were mine and I was picking them up later. Fortunately, my family name and local farming background gave me the credibility needed for them to accept that they'd take them up to the farm for me.

So at 4pm, I biked up the big hill and got to the farm over half-an-hour early, exhausted, only to be greeted by a farmer who clearly wasn't too pleased to have a vegan on his land. It's the strangest feeling, being behind enemy lines, as it were. So I sat and I waited for his wife and the two ladies who were picking him up to come. In the meantime, I sat and looked out over the rolling hills, the big old farmhouse and mused about a lot of things. I found myself thinking about all the conversations I'd had with farmers over the years about how hard they work, their hatred of us, our hatred of them. As I stroked the resident pussycat, who came directly over to me from 30ft away, I thought about how easily the place could become a paradise for wildlife and a sanctuary for farmed animals, instead. I thought about the strangeness of such a picturesque place being the home of so many animals I love to see, yet perplexingly a place of doom and despair for virtually all of them.

I'd also gotten news that, when they were rounding them up, there had been another accidental baby. Of course, I had to take all four of them. There wasn't much chance of me choosing one pair over the other. But much to my dismay, I noticed other lambs in a field just beyond the farm yard, and asked myself why I didn't save them, too. If I was just kidding myself, if I was a fool for being here to save just four of them, when all the rest would soon be killed.

But it was still one of the happiest moments of my life to see the ones I had come for gallop into the back of the rescue truck. It was almost as if they knew we were taking them to safety. Except little Malley, who hesitated in obvious fear.

That night, I got a video sent to me, showing the moment the four of them arrived at their new home, where they would never be separated, or sent off to slaughter and I felt so relieved and proud that I burst into tears watching it.

But my heart sank when the news came that Malley had become suddenly very ill in and was being seen by the emergency vet. At first, they suspected wet mouth, which occurs when lambs don't get sufficient colostrum and are exposed to bacteria or dirty conditions.

Yesterday, during the WTF Leeds event, I got news that Malley had passed away in the early hours of the night. And I felt so broken, and angry. My little fella had had the rare opportunity to live, free, for the rest of his life, with his mum, and it had all been cruelly taken away from him. All because of the conditions farmers keep their "livestock" in. I'm devastated to say the least.

I tried to console myself that at least he didn't suffer as he would have, had we not done what we did. That he wasn't clobbered over the head for being a boy, or ill, or wrenched away from his mum, carried away by his hind legs to have his throat slit. Instead, he died peacefully, heavily medicated, swaddled in a warm blanket, surrounded by his family who already loved him.

But what pains me more than anything is his poor mum has still lost her baby. She's still going to think we took him from her and it's soul destroying to think of her confusion and grief. It's the very thing I'd wanted to spare her from.

For me, it just hit me like a tonne of bricks how much I need to keep doing this. How much we ALL need to keep doing this, for lambs like Malley and all the other sweets souls being put through this inexcusable cruelty of being treated like a product.

No matter what problems I'm facing, no matter how much infighting is going on within our movement, it comes back to this: these beautiful, innocent animals need us. They need us to keep turning up to events, and they need us to speak up. They need us to get over our human sensitivities, our fear of humiliation or shame and keep going, because their suffering far outweighs the comparatively insignificant pain of awkward social interactions, or tension between former friends, or cancel culture, or petty personal differences.

I won't ever forget little Malley. He'll remain a part of me for the rest of my life. He's the little lamb I chose to rescue and he's the memory I'll turn to, time and time again, when I'm battling a deep depression or I think I'm too ineffective or beaten, or too unwanted, to do this. Because we did save him. And for two days, he was free. He bounced through lush green fields and he slept in a warm barn full of hay with his mum and little friend. It should have been, much, much longer... I'll always be haunted that it wasn't, but equally I'll always remember we can achieve such amazing things when we're motivated by love, care and morality.

May little Malley rest in peace. 💚😔