Championing the boys

Tegan Bryder is one of our newest volunteer recruits, joining the Inverness team earlier this year and bringing with her a passion for helping the boys as well as the girls.

Tegan has visited schools, educating teachers and students alike about the responsibilities of looking after chicks, many of which will be cockerels, and encouraging alternative ways of learning. She believes that instilling compassion in young children will help them think of animals as sentient creatures, rather than something that is easily disposable.

However, chick hatching schemes aren’t the only issue, with breeders often abandoning unwanted cockerels, and Tegan is determined to educate around this subject, too, to help stop the constant flow of unwanted birds.

Tegan has had great success rehoming the abandoned cockerels she takes on, and one of her favourites to date is Charles, who was abandoned on an allotment and eventually found perched on top of a chicken coop full of hens. It was pouring with rain, but he chose his feathered friends over shelter.

Tegan said: “Charles struggled to come to terms with the trauma he had experienced, but thankfully I later received a wonderful message from Cantraybridge College in Inverness. They wanted to rehome him with their flock of 18 hens where he would also become a therapy animal for adults with special needs.

“The college even has a café, so visitors can go and meet Charles themselves — which is a lovely ending to his story.”