We were working on the Annual Hayyyyy Drive webpage when we caught ourselves writing this:
We need 100 square bales of feed hay for the goats.
We stared at it for a minute. Then we crossed out feed and replaced it with FOOD.
FOOD hay.
It sounds a little weird, doesn’t it?
Why?
Dogs eat dog food. Cats eat cat food. We prepare their breakfasts and dinners, learn their favorite foods, and become alarmed when they skip a meal.
But goats, cows, pigs, and chickens are given feed.
Why do companion animals eat food while “farmed” animals eat feed?
That tiny edit opened up a much bigger conversation.
Before Anyone Calls the Language Police…
This is not a public shaming or an invitation to police one another’s vocabulary. Miss Charity, our HOA President, will not be issuing any fines for saying feed.
After all we have used that word approximately nine bazillion times. We will use it again accidentally. The Pig Forum archives can absolutely call us out.
Feed is also a perfectly normal verb. We feed the Sanctuary Babes every day. Brekkies. Dinners. Second Dinners.
But why does feed become a noun almost exclusively for animals we have decided are “livestock”? That pattern is worth noticing. Our everyday language often reinforces the divide between animals we consider companions and those we deem less worthy of care and consideration.
The Categories Belong to Us
Some animals are called companions. Others are called livestock.
Some have birthdays. Others reach market weight.
Some receive healthcare. Others are managed for production.
And some eat food from bowls. Others consume feed from troughs.
Those are not biological truths. They are categories, labels, and language we humans have created based on what we wanted from the other animals’ bodies.
Why Troughs Become Bus Stops
This is why troughs sometimes become bus stops at Odd Man Inn.
It is why the residents eat brekkies, dinners, and occasionally second dinners.
Yes, it is silly. The silliness is intentional.
A trough belongs to the vocabulary of livestock management. A place where animals are nameless numbers. Units of production. A bus stop, on the other hand, belongs to a neighborhood. It is a place where individuals gather, complain about the service, accuse someone of cutting the line, and insist that management has once again failed to arrive on schedule.
Calling it a bus stop does not change the physical object. But by calling it a bus stop we are simply refusing to let the language of animal agriculture tell the story of the individuals gathered around it.
We are not delivering feed rations to anonymous livestock.
We are serving brekkie to a community of Sanctuary Babes we know and love.
The point is to normalize seeing EVERY animal that way.
All animals eat FOOD.
All animals seek comfort, safety, friendship, and peace.
All animals value their lives.
All animals deserve love, consideration, compassion, and respect—not according to size, species, breed, or usefulness, but because they are sentient individuals.
So…FOOD Hay?
Yes. We are trying it.
The goats eat FOOD. Hay is part of their FOOD. Therefore, we are purchasing FOOD hay for the goats this winter.
It may sound awkward for a while. That awkwardness is useful. It asks us why feed hay sounded completely natural while FOOD hay made us pause.
We will still slip into the language of animal agriculture. We will call something a trough. We will refer to feed. We will notice after a post has already gone live and occasionally mutter something unprintable at the computer.
That is okay.
The goal is not perfection. The goal is attention.
Words are not a substitute for action. There are actual systems causing physical harm to animals every day. Animals need protection, resources, sanctuary, medical care, and humans willing to make different choices. Changing one word on a website does not accomplish that work by itself.
Words, however, are part of how we understand the world and our place in it. They can quietly create distance between us and other non-human animals without our even noticing.
And that is definitely FOOD for thought.
Meanwhile, Irish and the Babes are working to stock the Hay Barn with fresh bedding straw for the pigs and winter FOOD hay for the goats and cows. They have nearly 1,600 bales on their shopping list.
