Rescue Groups Save Hens

Animal-rescue groups are flocking to a Northern California egg-laying farm to take in thousands of hens allegedly abandoned by the farm’s owner after he could no longer afford to feed them. Investigating a complaint about a foul smell, authorities arrived to the abandoned A&L Poultry farm to find approximately 50,000 neglected hens—an estimated one-third of which had died—that appeared to have gone without feed for weeks. Rescue groups Animal Place, Farm Sanctuary, and Harvest Home Animal Sanctuary have each stepped up to save the roughly 2,000 healthy surviving hens from euthanasia. “We’re going to give them another chance at life,” says Kimberly Surla of Animal Place. The ranch’s owner, Andrew Keung Chung, will likely face criminal animal-cruelty charges.