Fashionable chick

Emma Phillips with her adopted ward - Image from Metro

This must be one of the most well-dressed hens we have ever seen. Buffy the hen lost all her feathers at a cramped battery farm in Brent Knoll, Somerset, England and when the RSPCA found her three weeks back she was all bald and shivering and was 2lbs underweight. Now, one year old Buffy has been given a blue and white striped knitted sweater to keep herself warm and has almost fully recovered. Deputy manager Emma Phillips has become Buffy's caretaker and she keeps the hen in nestbox in a chicken shed at the centre. She says that it is common enough to find hens in Buffy's condition, because hens like Buffy are kept in a cage about 50cm by 55cm and between three and six chickens are usually kept in this space. Thanks to the RSPCA's care Buffy has recovered enough to, "peck and scratch about." She joins the other hens in sunbathing albeit wearing her little sweater. Once she grows back all her feathers she will be re-homed in the next few months.

Watch Buffy move and shake

Buffy's "foster mom" has some things to say

Sleeping with the enemy

Pigs and tigers are not a new combination. Here a tiger plays with a pig in a zoo in Sriracha, Chonburi Province in Thailand where tiger cubs are encouraged to take milk from pigs to speed up their growth - Image from Reuters

Usually pigs would be food for tigers. But in Ukraine a very close bond has developed between the hunter and the hunted. Three tiger cubs are being taken care of by a pig on a farm in Dnipropetrovsk, southern Ukraine, after being abandoned by their mother. Farm worker Maria Mandjeli says that the piglets are not too happy on these foreign visitors sharing their mother. They try to push the tigers away and when she puts her hand to shield the tiger cubs the piglets bite her. So she holds the tiger cubs and assists them to have their milk without being trampled by the piglets. The cubs' mother live at a private zoo but the zookeepers had to take the cubs to the farm next door because the mother refused to care for them. The zoo director Yuriy Aksenych, however, defends her saying that she was born in a zoo and hence "has no experience of nature."

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