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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS
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OCTOBER 2005
Chicken rescue
Katrina closed 11 of the 14 Mississippi chicken slaughterhouses, according to the National Chicken Council, briefly cutting U.S. poultry killing by as much as 10%. Tornadoes driven ahead of Katrina destroyed at least 17 “growout houses” in Georgia, killing more than 250,000 chickens and one chicken farmer.
The Farm Sanctuary refuge at Watkins Glen, New York, on September 14 accepted 725 chickens “saved from a farm ravaged by Hurricane Katrina in rural Mississippi,” according to a Farm Sanctuary press release. The chickens had been left to die or be bulldozed into mass graves.”
“We saw a massive open grave containing thousands of dead chickens crawling with maggots,” elaborated volunteer Kate Walker. “Shockingly, 21 were still alive, huddled in the corner of the pit.” “The property included five warehouse-type sheds, each confining tens of thousands of birds,” added Animal Place founder Km Sturla, who was on the scene with personnel from the Black Beauty Ranch sanctuary in Texas.
“The producer, who raises broiler chickens for Tyson Foods, collected 15,000 birds from the damaged sheds and relocated them into the already overcrowded remaining two sheds,” Sturla said. “He felt it would be inhumane to cram more birds into the remaining sheds, and allowed us to save as many as we could before they died.”
That was the only mass rescue of poultry reported to ANIMAL PEOPLE.