ABOUT CHICKEN RUN RESCUE:

Every year, domestic fowl, mostly chickens, are impounded by Minneapolis Animal Control (MAC). These birds are victims of neglect, abuse and abandonment, sometimes used as a source of eggs or intended for slaughter, fighting or ritual sacrifice. Some are the discarded outcome of "nature lessons" for children or after a hobby that no longer holds interest. After their release from MAC, Chicken Run provides the birds with temporary shelter and vet care, locates and screens adopters within 90 miles of the Twin Cities and transports the birds to their new homes. Chicken Run Rescue is the only urban chicken rescue of its kind and receives no support from any other organizations, institutions or agencies and depends entirely on donations and sales of art merchandise to continue helping chickens. There is a special need for rooster homes. Don't breed or buy- Adopt! There are never enough homes for displaced animals.

The Animal Rights Coalition has generously offered to sponsor Chicken Run Rescue so that we can receive tax deductible donations from individuals who support our work.

To make a tax deductible donation to Chicken Run Rescue: go to http://animalrightscoalition.com

click on the Donate button, enter 'Chicken Run Rescue'in the Item field.

You can also make the check payable to the Animal Rights Coalition and write "Chicken Run Rescue" in the memo.

Listen to Radio MnArtist's Marya Morstad interview Chicken Run Rescue founder Mary Britton Clouse: Marya Morstad talks to Mary Britton Clouse

Watch radio personality Ira Glass talk with TV host David Letterman about Chickens and why he doesn't eat them anymore! Ira Glass Talks About Chickens

THINGS TO CONSIDER BEFORE GETTING CHICKENS:

Mary Britton Clouse
Founder, Chicken Run Rescue

Whether a fad or enduring change, living with chickens presents both opportunities and challenges to rethink our relationship with the most unjustly treated land animals on the planet. Will familiarity engender more respect for them as sentient individuals and reshape our behavior towards them or will they continue to be viewed as a means to an end at our whim?

The opportunity for ethical evolution lies in enabling us to learn first hand that chickens are intelligent, gentle, vivacious individuals who form lifelong emotional bonds with each other and other species. They are warm, silky and lovely to hold. Their genetics and instinctive behaviors are remarkably little changed from their prehistoric ancestors, the dinosaurs.
Amazing.

They are primarily ground dwelling birds who are very home centered and can thrive in a typical urban backyard and home. They coexist happily with compatible dogs and cats and have life spans of 12 -14 years. Chickens are better adapted to living with us as companions than their exotic kin, parrots, who suffer terrible physical and psychological stress in captivity.

A shift in critical thought about who is "food" and who is "pet" could mean a less violent world for the chickens and other animals trapped in a food production hell hidden from view ("free range" and "cage free" birds meet their factory farmed cousins at the same slaughter plants). Each year in the US, over 10 billion chickens suffer from intense confinement, cruel handling and painful terrifying deaths. Although they represent over 95% of the animals raised for agricultural and other purposes, chickens are excluded from protection of anticruelty laws, humane slaughter laws and laws that regulate experimentation.

The challenge of increased interest in backyard flocks is to insure that people who have good intentions about creating a more "sustainable" world make an informed choice before they make the commitment:

• Inconvenient Truth: Only hens are wanted for eggs. Roosters are the most cruelly treated sex of the most cruelly treated species on earth. Since they have no value in egg production, a quarter billion male chicks a year are disposed of at the hatchery- killed as soon as their sex is determined at a day or two day old. The unwanted males are suffocated in the garbage or ground up alive for fertilizer or feed or are sold for meat production.
  Unwanted baby roosters are often shipped as "packing material". There are no laws to protect the chicks from any cost-efficient (read: cruel) method of disposal the producer chooses. At a commercial hatchery, of 80,000 chicks hatched per week, 40,000 of them never see the light of their second day.
  Whether they are purchased by an individual or a corporation, directly from a hatchery or a local supplier who purchased them from a hatchery, the same industry benefits, and the roosters are killed.
  
  
• Chicks are transported in the mail and subject to heat, cold and food and water deprivation. They suffer and die in airline transport all the time.
  
  
• Breeding displaces existing animals who need homes. Our Minneapolis based rescue and adoption organization, Chicken Run Rescue, has been overwhelmed with inquiries from people wanting to find homes for roosters they have "accidentally" purchased or bred. As nature would have it, they are 50% of the chickens hatched. Unfortunately, this surprises alot of people too late.
  
  
• Egg laying peaks at 18 months. Hens are customarily discarded and replaced when laying declines.
  
  
• Instead of purchasing purpose bred chickens from hatcheries or feed stores, consider adopting a bird who needs a home. We hope to expand Chicken Run's mission to include arranging adoptions for "retired" hens from local free range organic providers. Not many people realize that even the "free range, organic" hens are sent to slaughter (or worse) at the age of about 18 months once their productivity declines.
  
  
• Vet care is necessary and expensive. We spend on average $300 per year per bird.
  
  
• Chickens are descended from jungle fowl. Minnesota winter shelter needs to be moisture proof, insulated and have a heat source (ours coop up in our basement for comfort and energy efficiency). Toes, combs and wattles are subject to frostbite which is extremely painful and can be lethal. No one would accept a dog¹s ability to "survive" extreme weather as an acceptable standard of care.
  
  
• Daily egg laying is biologically unnatural and unsustainable. Chickens in nature produce two or three clutches per year. Selective breeding for egg laying has produced birds prone to reproductive disorders like prolapse, egg binding, and calcium deficiency. Spend half an hour in a room of chicken enthusiasts and one of those topics will come up.
  
  
• Chickens are prey species and need serious protection from Minnesota predators Raccoon, Dog, Coyote, Fox, Mink, Opossum, Rat, Owl, Bobcat, Hawk, Snake, Weasel, Ferret, Fisher and Marten.
  

We hope that the human/chicken bond will evolve. "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice".

REASONS TO ADOPT CHICKENS AS COMPANION ANIMALS:

Chickens are highly intelligent, gentle, vivacious individuals who form strong lifelong emotional bonds with each other as well as other species.

They are warm and silky and lovely to hold.

They are primarily ground dwelling birds who are very home and routine centered and can thrive in a space the size of a normal urban backyard and home. They can coexist happily with compatible dogs and cats and have similar life spans.

Adopting a chicken will increase compassion and reduce violence in the world. They are the most unjustly treated land animals on the planet. Each year in the US, over 10 billion chickens suffer from intense confinement, cruel handling and painful terrifying deaths. Although they represent over 95% of the animals raised for agricultural and other purposes, they are excluded from protection of anticruelty laws, humane slaughter laws and laws that regulate experimentation.

REASONS NOT TO PURCHASE CHICKS FROM HATCHERIES:

Breeding always displaces existing animals who need homes.

50 % disposed of as waste
Since they are of no value in the production of eggs, a quarter billion male chicks a year are disposed of at the hatchery. Males, 50% of the chicks hatched by hatcheries and commercial egg breeding facilities, are killed as soon as their sex is determined at a day or two day old. The unwanted males and deformed females are suffocated in the garbage or macerated (ground up
alive) for fertilizer or feed or they are sold for meat production. Only hens are wanted for their eggs. There are no laws to protect the chicks from any cost-efficient (read: cruel) method of disposal the producer chooses.
Poultry is exempt from humane slaughter laws. At a facility like McMurray¹s Hatchery, this amounts to 80,000 chicks per week, 40,000 of them doomed from the start.

Mistaken for hens, a few males slip through the sexing and wind up in hobbiest¹s shipments- sometimes intentionally included as live "packing material" to be discarded as the recipient sees fit. It is difficult to determine the sex of most breeds until about 6 months so it is no coincidence that most roosters are that age when they are abandoned or headed for a stew pot.

30 to 80% die in transit
Baby chicks are transported in the mail and subject to heat, cold and food and water deprivation. They suffer and die in airline transport all the time. Unlike human passengers and companion animals who fly in weather-controlled, ventilated compartments, day-old chickens, ducks, geese, partridges, pheasants, guinea fowl, quails and turkeys are shipped like luggage. These birds do not travel as "cargo," like your cat or dog, but as mail, this being the cheapest way for hatcheries to fly them for use as Easter gifts, science and 4-H projects, breeding, cockfighting, backyard poultry keeping, target practice, or whatever the buyer wants to do with them.

In nature, when chicks hatch under a mother hen, the earliest hatched chicks must wait for all the chicks to hatch. They survive by absorbing their yolk nutrients during this time. A clutch of chicks normally hatches between 24 and 48 hours – not 72 hours. Held in commercial incubators, the earliest hatching chicks shipped to customers as airmail may already be 36 hours old even before they are loaded onto the plane.

For this and other reasons, including excessive heat, excessive cold, poor packaging, and being banged around in their boxes, chicks in airline transport die all the time. An average of 30 percent to as high as 80 percent of birds arrive dead, according to the airlines. Unlike human passengers and companion animals who fly in weather-controlled, ventilated compartments, the chicks are shipped like luggage – because it's cheap – according to Post Office rules established in 1924 to accommodate the hatchery lobby.

When to these problems the fact is added that many flights include extended layovers, it is clear why so many chicks, even if they survive the flight, die soon after reaching their final destination. The stress, including lack of food and water, has left them too weak to eat and drink. Birds with dehydrated internal organs do not recover.

The best thing that people who truly love chickens in a responsible manner can do is to adopt one or more birds from a humane society, shelter or rescue group such as Chicken Run Rescue.

Thanks to United Poultry Concens for contributing to this information.

VET CLINICS FOR CHICKEN CARE MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL / WESTERN WISCONSIN VICNITY

This list does not constitute an endorsement.
Please notify chickenrunrescue@comcast.net of additions or corrections.

CHICKEN CARE LINKS

http://www.farmanimalshelters.org/care_chicken.htm
http://www.upc-online.org/chickens/
http://www.msstate.edu/dept/poultry/disaid.htm
http://parrothouse.com/hlthcare.html#Emergency%20Sick%20Bird%20Care

HOW TO ADOPT

1. Send a message to chickenrunrescue@comcast.net to subscribe to the Chicken Run Rescue Adoption Chronicles. The Chronicles contain a link to our Petfinders site at http://www.chickenrunrescue.petfinder.org where you will find personality profiles and photos of the birds who are currently available for adoption.

2. Send an e-mail about the specific bird(s) whom you are interested in along with and photos of your facility in the e-mail.

3. Read the Summary of Terms of Adoption

4. Fill out the online Adoption Application form and click the submit button at the end.

5. If the bird is still available, you will be contacted by phone to finalize adoption arrangements.

6. We bring the bird to your home and the adoption agreement is signed and fee paid at that time.

COMING SOON!

Minnesota Chicken Care: Housing, Health and Happiness, Caring for a Sick or Injured Chicken, Healthy Diet for Chickens, Socializing Roosters, Living with House Chickens, Gardening for and with Chickens, Introducing Roosters to New Flock Members.

CHICKEN RUN RESCUE PHOTO CONTEST

INTERNATIONAL RESPECT FOR CHICKENS DAY- MAY 4TH

What better month than May to honor our chicken friends as they revel in the dirt and things that are green. And what better teachers than they about how to celebrate spring. Its the perfect time to speak up for the most unjustly treated beings in the world.

Please join Chicken Run Rescue and United Poultry Concerns in recognizing May as International Respect for Chickens Month. We invite you to capture the beauty, joy, intelligence, dignity, agility and zany exuberance of your birds in a photograph.

Twelve winning photos will be published in a calendar and winners will receive a free calendar.

All of the proceeds of the calendar sales will enable us to continue to help chickens for another year. Chicken Run Rescue receives no support from any other organizations, institutions or agencies. Chicken Run Rescue is the only urban based chicken rescue and adoption organization of its kind.

To view the entries and vote on your favorite photos visit the Chicken Run Rescue Photo Contest site at:
http://www.brittonclouse.com/chickenrunrescue/photos08/

To view the entries and winners of previous years Chicken Run Rescue Photo Contest visit:

http://www.brittonclouse.com/chickenrunrescue/photos/ and http://www.brittonclouse.com/chickenrunrescue/photos07/

For more information about United Poultry Concerns please visit:http://www.upc-online.org/

CONTEST RULES
Photograph everyday activities that are natural for your bird- no costumes, staged stunts or props. CRR reserves the right to decline any images that conflict with our mission to promote the adoption of homeless chickens as companion animals and discourage breeding or buying. There are never enough homes for displaced animals.

Submission Deadline: May 15
Voting: ongoing thru May 15
Winners Announced: June 4

Send high resolution digital photos to  chickenrunrescue@comcast.net Include your name, title or birds name, address, phone and email address.

RELEASE AGREEMENT
Submission of photographs implies acceptance of the following  terms:
Entrants in the Chicken Run Rescue Photo Contest retain all copyrights and other equivalent rights to their entered photographs. However, Entrants give Chicken Run Rescue the right to reproduce and publish their photographs and name in a calendar and in advertising to promote sales of the calendar.  In all cases where such photographs and names are used, Entrants give Chicken Run Rescue the right to do so without obtaining the photographer's further prior permission and without offering any compensation in any form except for the token prize of one free calendar.

	CHICKEN RUN RESCUE CALENDAR AND GREETING CARDS

2008 Chicken Run Rescue Photo Contest Calendar
		Great gifts, Great cause!
		A new inspiring picture and quote each month.
		Calendar $25
Also available Original Art Note Cards $15 10 per pack with envelopes Allow 4-6 weeks for delivery	To order Use Visa or MasterCard email chickenrunrescue@comcast.net   Prices in US dollars include shipping & handling   100% proceeds enable Chicken Run Rescue to continue helping chickens-170 rescues since 2001!