Rescue Stories

Jake and Peanut had a rough journey to Farm Sanctuary. Instead of traveling in a crate or trailer, the boys arrived in the open bed of a pickup truck, tied down flat with bungee cords. The family who brought them in said they'd found the two just wandering around. The family's small children were weeping, though, suggesting a very different story that we'd never learn. But seeing them handled like boxes rather than living beings, we knew we couldn't ignore their need.

In 1993, Farm Sanctuary began welcoming animals to our then-new Sanctuary location in Orland, California. Waylon was the 86th of 94 animals rescued that year.

2016 Featured Animal Rescues

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.