steampunk birdhouses: fowl dwellings

Fowl Dwellings

john male: animal friendly animal rug

John Male is on the animal friendly front with this inventive non-animal hide rug. I love that designers like Sean Kelley and Jason Miller are creating such aesthetically pleasing, decorative animal alternatives for the home. The animals thank you.
Rug available at Studio John Male.

flat pack prototype chicken coop

The University of Colorado, Boulder has created an Urban Chicken Coop Project to focus on the current backyard chicken raising trend happening in Boulder County. The city has seen an upsurge in its community garden project and 360,000 visitors to the Boulder County Farmers' Market each year. Many local restaurants incorporate the locavore movement so the local food movement and production is a huge priority. The citizens of Boulder are propelled to natural living, outdoor activities such as, biking, hiking, skiing and now gardening and farming have become the latest path to follow. A nationwide dialogue has begun proving that a chicken coop can be maintained in a backyard urban environment.

Two University of Colorado professors-Richard Saxton in the Art and Art History department and Rob Pyatt in the College of Architecture and Urban Planning have challenged their students to revisit the age old debate; can urban exist in the rural and can the rural exist in the urban. The "Chicken Shack Village" installation explores rural aesthetics and farming in an urban environment.

College of Architecture and Urban Planning instructor Rob Pyatt's design and build class to complete the first model for the easy-to-build chicken coop kit for homeowners. The most successful seems to be Jeff Troutman's flat pack chicken coop design (in black). Jeff's affordable design is an easy to assemble coop utilizing digital fabrication methods to cut FSC certified plywood sheeting with minimal hardware into 4'X4' sections, ultimately housing up to 6 chickens when constructed. The design includes a chicken run and is meant to be set up next to a backyard fence, still allowing for easy access to collect eggs.

Currently, in Boulder, there is an exhibit of Troutman and others designs for the chicken coops at the BMOCA Museum.

In addition to "Chicken Shack Village," symposiums have been set up to allow speakers such as the Urban Hens organization to address topics of collaborative art, raising chickens in the urban setting, environmental responsibility, healthy living, building and maintaining coops, as well as local farming and gardening.

More information available on this project at CO &
AB.

elephant sanctuary in tennessee

Read this CNN article about a wonderful, domestic elephant sanctuary.

save dolphins from being slaughtered in japan

If you have not yet seen The Cove Movie, I urge you to watch it! I usually do not post a request in its entirety on my blog, however this particular issue is so urgent that I encourage everyone with a blog to copy this post and paste it on their blog too. Please help save dolphins from needless suffering and brutality.

Petition Announcement from End the Brutal Killing of More Than 20,000 Dolphins Every Year in Japan:

This past week Ric O’Barry and a team of activists from Save Japan Dolphins and Earth Island Institute have been in Taiji, Japan, the site of the largest killing of dolphins in the world. Their brave vigil has brought media coverage from around the world, and shone a light on the dangers to dolphins and people of letting this slaughter continue. Reaction has been so strong within Japan that the cove has remained tranquil. No dolphins were killed this past week.

But new reports indicate that Taiji dolphin hunters have captured 50-100 dolphins today, possibly for export to aquariums.

This campaign is far from over, and the killing could resume any day. We need you help to keep up the momentum.

You’re among more than 150,000 people from around the world who have signed the Save Japan Dolphins Facebook Cause Petition. If everyone of you could get 7 more people to sign this petition, we could have 1 MILLION signatures to show President Obama, Vice President Biden, and the US Ambassador to Japan. Please help today by getting 7 of your friends to sign:

on FACEBOOK

Help us keep the campaign in Japan going. Your donation will go directly to efforts to stop the dolphin slaughter in Japan. We’ve set a goal of raising $5,000 to keep Ric and his team in Japan and hope you’ll join in by making a Donation.

You can also donate through our SaveJapanDolphin.org website secure transaction center at:

Earth Island HELP

Also, if you haven’t joined as a member of the Facebook Save Japan Dolphins Cause, click below. We'll keep you updated about what's happening with the Cove, what you can do to stop the dolphin slaughter, and you can meet other people who care about this issue too:

Sign the Petition

Thanks for making a difference!

icosadron bird house

here

knit crochetdermy

Sorry for the long delay of posts, vacation gets addictive. Thought you might like some Crochetdermy!

faux fur campana furniture

Fabulous new animal friendly faux fur sofa by Fernando and Humberto Campana!

mass migration of sting rays

Sandra Critelli captured the migration at the northern tip of the Yucatan Peninsula.