Photo Gallery: Sandye the Rescued Mystery Hen
We've written about one of our adopted hens Sandye that we often call the "mystery hen" because we know so little about what her life was like before we adopted her, other than the farmer who discarded...
View ArticleConsider Helping Angelica, Our First Official Rescued Hen!
Angelica was found wandering the city streets of Chicago and was picked up by Chicago Animal Control and Care late last Wednesday night. A dedicated Chicago animal rescuer, Melissa Pena, got her out of...
View ArticleBusting Up the Illegal Slaughter Farm Mafia
No one knows the horrors of illicit backyard slaughter farming in Southern Florida like Richard “Kudo” Couto, founder of the Animal Recovery Mission (ARM) in South Florida. In the last couple of years,...
View ArticleHenry: Our Latest Rescue Recuperating After Near Death Experience
Henry is a very young pigeon we found on the ground on a bitterly cold night a few weeks ago outside of a friend’s Chicago apartment building. He was unable to walk due to what we later discovered was...
View ArticleWhat Do You Do with the Eggs If You Don’t Eat Them?
"What do you do with all the eggs if you don’t eat them?" is the most common question I get about the chickens in my care. The assumption underlying this question is that chickens lay eggs in the same...
View ArticleSweet Pea the Adopted Chicken Needs Surgery Due to Egg Laying
Sweet Pea is one of the adopted chickens in our care since 2009 who now needs surgery and hospitalization for a condition due to her egg laying. This video covers Sweet Pea's recent visit to the vet...
View ArticleBeyond Eggs: Why I Keep Backyard Chickens
People often ask me why I have chickens. “Is it for the eggs?,” they ask. Now of course, what this question implies is that there is no other value to chickens than the eggs they produce. In fact, I...
View ArticleSanctuary Life Reveals Who Chickens Really Are
I had an unexpected visit from a new neighbor and her two children who were really interested in meeting the Free from Harm chickens. The mother, Joanna, had taken her children to a working farm called...
View ArticleEdith: Latest Rescued Chicken, Found in a Plastic Bag on a Busy Street
I got a call from a Facebook friend that a chicken had been found in a plastic bag on the street near another Chicago poultry market — still alive, as if she were just trash. The kind young man named...
View ArticleChicken Rescuer Says Hens from New Colony Cages as Damaged as Those from...
My personal opinion and that of people I know who have rescued enriched colony caged hens is that there is no difference in health between the battery and colony caged hens. I also believe from...
View ArticleChicken Playdate: Edith Plays with Doris’ Tail Feathers
As Edith explores her new world, her behavior resembles that of a toddler playing with everything in sight. Today she’s taken a particular interest in playing with Doris’ tail feathers, much to her...
View ArticleThe Voice of Sanctuary
"I do what I do simply because I cannot go back outside to the sanctuary and look them in the eye without conveying the information that I feel they would want me to convey: that using them, for any...
View ArticleLucinda, Latest Chicken Rescue Needs Urgent Medical Attention
Our heroine, Melissa Summer Pena, rescued Lucinda today from Chicago Animal Control and Care (a kill shelter), describing her as the sickest looking bird she’s seen. In addition to being severely...
View ArticleA Tribute to Edith the Chicken Who Survived the Trash
In her short life, Edith experienced the kindest and cruelest of humanity. She clearly judged people she encountered as individuals, trusting and bonding with us as her new caregivers immediately, even...
View ArticleSweet Pea: The Life of an Egg Laying Chicken
Some of you may recall that our wonderful hen Sweet Pea needed to have exploratory surgery in March to determine the cause of a large and growing mass in her abdomen. Fortunately it was not a tumor,...
View ArticleA Female Chicken Befriends a Male Pitbull
Lucinda, our latest rescue found last month on the brink of starvation, has been rehabilitating at the home of one of our rescue heroines, Melissa Summer Pena. Lucinda’s getting stronger and healthier...
View ArticleVirtual Chicken Sanctuary: Next Best Thing to Being There
We believe it is vitally important for people to connect with living, happy animals who have been rescued from commercial farming. Seeing these animals in a sanctuary environment allows people to...
View ArticleSanctuaries Teach Us What Farms Can’t
Visiting a sanctuary is a vastly different experience than visiting a farm. Farms value animals to the extent that they produce a profitable product via their flesh, mammary gland secretions or...
View ArticleA Chicken Journey to Safety Rather than Death
When a sanctuary spends $50,000 of its hard-earned donations to transport 1,150 “spent” egg-laying chickens who have seen nothing but the inside of a battery cage across the country to give them a...
View ArticleMeet Louise: Free from Harm’s Latest Rescued Chicken
Louise is Free from Harm‚'s latest hen rescue. We responded to a call from Chicago Animal Control and Care who found her on the streets of Chicago. She has a beak deformity from having been debeaked...
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