A twister ripped through a King Country animal sanctuary this morning, bringing down fences and tossing chicken coops hundreds of metres away.
The Takiwatanga Sanctuary Trust is an animal therapy centre for people with autism, and also takes in rescue animals.
Steve Brown, who runs the trust, says some chickens have perished and the remaining animals are very upset and some are running wild about the property.
Brown told Afternoons he was working with the therapy dogs inside when he heard a commotion.
“[I] rushed out and saw a 12-foot by five-foot solid chicken coop being lifted in the air and thrown 100 metres down to our lake. So we’ve got trees down, and sheets of iron blowing everywhere, we’ve got a couple of pet cows that we use as therapy … and they’ve broken through all our fences.
“We’ve got about four rescue horses and three rescue donkeys at the moment which I’ve just managed to round up. We’ve got baby goslings and baby chicks that have just lost their mom, so I’ve rounded up most of those and caged them, but yeah, it’s a bit of a mess.”
Brown says it was a bit of a teary moment upon realising the disaster that struck them, and trying to gather the animals, figure out what needs to be fixed and what’s been broken.
He’s thankful that they didn’t lost any of the Avairy birds but a couple of the 200 rescue hens they have are now gone. And the animals seem to be shaken up by the incident too, he says.
“The horses are pretty bad, they’ve tried to go through some fences, so we’ve got torn covers and rounding them up is a bit of a mission … the chickens, I’m trying to get up into barns and things, we’ve managed to shut up our pet pigs and the alpacas have taken to the hills and they’ve managed to get to a bush area we’ve got, so they’re pretty sheltered at the moment.
“But of course, it’s breeding time, so we have baby geese and ducks and chicks and they’re all over the place.
“The rabbit hutches have gone flying so we’ve got all our pet rabbits free ranging at the front yard at the moment, which is about half an acre …. and they’re fine, they’re just going have to stay until we can collect them at the moment.”
And with only two working at the trust, Brown and his husband, Brown estimates it’s going to take them a few weeks of clean-up before they can slowly return to normality.
