ABOUT HEN HARBOR
Located near Santa Cruz, California, Hen Harbor is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization founded in 2012 to provide rescue, rehabilitation and rehoming of unwanted roosters and hens – particularly those rescued from the factory farming industry. We also provide permanent sanctuary for many special-needs, elderly, or otherwise unadoptable domesticated chickens.
WHY CHICKENS?
Hen Harbor’s founder worked for almost two decades at the nation's largest animal protection organization, first in the legislative department and later as an animal cruelty caseworker. She also worked as a consultant for the nation's largest farm animal sanctuary. During this time, she documented, and rescued animals from the most horrific industrial farming conditions imaginable. She found that by far, the most intense suffering on the largest scale is that perpetrated by the poultry industry -- with factory-farmed egg-laying hens enduring the worst conditions of all.
The rising popularity of backyard chickens has done little to quell the suffering of laying hens. As with factory-farmed hens, many backyard hens are no longer wanted once their egg production drops at just a few years old. Nearly all roosters who hatch are killed or otherwise discarded, either immediately upon hatching or a few months later when they mature into crowing adolescents.
Consequently, there is a virtually unending need for safe homes for older hens and younger roosters.
OUR RESIDENTS
Cinnamon Hen
Former laying hens from the egg-industry comprise the bulk of our incoming residents. Normally these scruffy (but otherwise healthy) hens are killed at the age of 2. Finding them loving, adoptive homes is a major focus.
Creepy dave
Roosters -- The largely unspoken, dark side of the backyard chicken industry is the fate of the male birds. Most will not live more than a few minutes, killed instantly upon hatching. Those who make it out of the hatchery alive are usually either directly killed or abandoned by their caretakers once they start crowing.
Google goose
The ducks and geese at Hen Harbor are mostly former pets who were abandoned at parks, often when they become too much work for their caretakers. Dumped domesticated waterfowl cannot fly and rarely last more than a few weeks before succumbing to predators, the harsh elements, or starvation.