Shiny New Cattle Shade
When I started TOLFA, I don’t think we really appreciated how many cows we would need to rescue on a daily basis. After dogs, cows are our most frequently rescued animal.
Every street is littered with them, wandering through the traffic and eating the rubbish. Cows that are owned but released into the community when they are dry and not producing milk, bull calves that are left to fend for themselves because they have no use or cows that are donated for religious purposes, but with nowhere to keep them, wander around in search of food.
Front view of cattle shade
We soon grew out of the small cow shade that we initially built along with funds raised by staff and students at the Kendriya Vidaliya school. This area is now used only for small calves and downer cows. Without the funds to build a bigger housing facility, for a year the cows were kept in the safety of the shell of our house that was yet to be completed.
Thankfully though, in the summer of 2008, we were contacted by a local charity, the Kuttishala.
Trustees Kalpana and Deepak receive the generous donation from Kuttishala trustees
Although, as the hindi name suggests, they were established to help dogs, they were keen to donate a sum of money to help with our most needed building project. At that time, it was to build a bigger purpose built cattle shade. The Kuttishala agreed to fund 50% of the building costs. As so often seems to happen when we begin a building project, the rest of the funds soon fell into place.
New Cattle shade foundations
Barbara Webb and Jim Pearson who are UK trustees and supporters of a charity, newly renamed HAT which aims to provide financial support to animal charities in Nepal are also regular donors to TOLFA. Their third very generous donation to us was put towards 25% of the cattle shade construction costs.
The plaques showing the donors that made our Cattle Shade building possible
The remaining 25% was borne equally between The Valerie White Memorial Trust, lead by trustees Helen Watson and Tee Hesketh and an anonymous donor who also very generously funded the building of our boundary wall.
In December 2008, the cows were finally able to move into their new abode and very happy they were about it too!
View of the cows living inside the cattle shade
