Rescue & Adoptions

2006 Featured Rescues

Four Unique Chickens Rescued from Classroom Hatching Project

Airwing, Banther, Silky, and Dorian were rescued from school hatching projects in California. They were scheduled to be discarded after the hatching projects were over, but thanks to the kindness of one caring student and his family, their lives were spared. Airwing, a beautiful Rhode Island Red, and her Silky Bantam friend Banther were rescued six years ago and brought to live at the student's home. Silky and Dorian, who are also Silky Bantams, were rescued from another hatching project at the same school last year and happily joined the two older birds in their new home. When the family who cared for the four rescued chickens was no longer able to keep them, Farm Sanctuary agreed to offer them a permanent home.

Airwing and her friends were very lucky to escape the hatching project they had unwittingly been made a part of. Sadly, although hatching projects are designed to be instructive, they teach young people very little about compassion. Every year, primary school teachers place thousands of fertilized eggs in classroom incubators with the intention of teaching students about the stages of embryonic development. Instead of being nurtured through the incubation period by loving mother hens, the un-hatched chicks are placed in the care of teachers and children who often know very little about the precise conditions required to hatch a healthy bird.

Mother hens turn each of their eggs as many as 30 times per day, communicate soothing sounds to their embryonic chicks, and can respond to subtle signals from their un-hatched young. Afforded none of these natural comforts and helps, chicks used in school projects often turn out sick or crippled when they are hatched. Others die when teachers open their eggs to let students view the embryo or when they hatch on a weekend and have no one to care for them. Even those chicks who are healthy when hatched face a grim fate. Their usefulness at an end, they are sold to live poultry markets and auctions, fed to zoo animals, surrendered to animal control to be euthanized, or simply discarded in dumpsters.

Thankfully, Airwing, Banther, Silky, and Dorian will never have to face such a fate. They will be safe and well cared for all the rest of their lives, enjoying companionship, good food, and lots of healthy exercise in a place where their worth is recognized and respected. They have all these joys to look forward to because one family was able to see the birds as they really are - beings deserving of life and happiness.