Rescue Stories

In early March, we received a call about a couple of chickens roaming around a rest stop. Knowing how dangerous it is for chickens to be loose and unprotected, we immediately set out to see if we could locate them. After a long and thorough search of the area where they were spotted, we still hadn’t located the birds. We were close to giving up, fearing the worst, when we noticed a small, white ball of fluff in a dense patch of trees and brush.

Hand-raised as a 4-H project by a Pennsylvania dairy farmer’s grandchild, Faith was daily tended to by a young girl as a calf, primed to grow into a fertile and profitable adult dairy cow.

In September our New York Shelter welcomed cows Tink, Peter, and Rufio; chickens Mary, Jo, Beth, and Amy; and duck Ping. The animals were skinny and crawling with parasites, and the birds were terrified.

Like fellow shelter newcomers Calvin and Paul Harvey, elderly sheep Amy Lynn came to us from a combination goat dairy/sanctuary that sheltered a number of other animals in addition to its large goat herd.

Called to the scene of a neglect case in New York’s Hudson Valley last week, we walked onto a property that was essentially part garbage dump, part graveyard.

Bessie, Satchmo, and Bird spent the first four months of their lives in an aquarium on a third-floor apartment balcony in Los Angeles County.

Laverne and Shirley hail from a rather unusual flock. The two belonged not to a commercial flock exploited for wool or meat but to a small group of sheep under the care of a retired nun.

The rescue of three ducklings began on the morning of Monday, August 31, when National Placement Coordinator Alicia Pell received an urgent message.

Born into the farm-animal equivalent of a puppy mill, Avery had been taken from his mother, painfully castrated, and sold off as a pet before he was even five days old.

Animal husbandry projects through programs like Future Farmers of America (FFA) and 4-H typically end with participants auctioning off the animals they have raised, knowing that their erstwhile companions will be headed to slaughter.