Karen Winter – Brisbane

About

I have been around cats all my life. With my most recent cat, it was always better to leave him in his own home, and have someone come and take care of him there. He preferred this to going to stay with friends, as he used to get upset after leaving him with various friends after a while.

I grew up on a dairy farm so I am familiar with many animals, and as a family we always had farm dogs. We had to feed the chickens each morning, feed the calves their milk when they were young, sometimes help round the cows up for milking.

As a child I had budgies, goldfish aquariums, mice, guinea pigs and cats as pets. My father owned a garden centre with a pet centre, so we had to take care of the pets on weekends. He had a big aviary and breeding fish aquarians, which I had to take care of when my parents went on holiday. I have some experience with alpacas (my father used to breed them), horses and farm animals. My brother is a now a farmer.

I have kept chickens for many years so have experience looking after them, and in recent times, I have taken care of friends chickens when they went overseas for three months at a time. We used to take turns care for each others chickens. I would take mine to their place, or they would bring theirs to my place. All our chickens learned to get along with each other.

I minded a friends home and dog in Bali a few years back, who was very happy the way I looked after his dog, who absolutely loved me.

When I was in high school one of my pets was a calf called Suckie. I had to go and move her every day as she lived on the side of our back access road. I had to ensure she had enough to each and plenty of fresh water. She loved to bunt me and adored head scratches. I take care of small herds of cattle, sheep, horses, chickens, cats, dogs, fish aquariums, birds, guinea pigs and rabbits. Even pet mice and rats.