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Haven Hill Animal Sanctuary, Mailing Address: 2210 4th Avenue West, Suite 2011, Williston, ND (2026)

10/13/2026

“How could anyone be so cruel?”, “Where was PETA?”, “That is absolutely horrific!”, “How is this even legal?”, “I can’t believe they haven’t shut that down!”, “What kind of person could do something so horrible?”, “How could something like that even be allowed?”

We’ve heard these reactions countless times when sharing Pretzel’s story. People are horrified that he was thrown from a building during Pioneer Days, his life treated as nothing more than entertainment. The outrage is immediate, the condemnation unmistakable, and the disbelief overwhelming. They should be horrified! Yet here’s the part that should horrify us just as much: Some of the very people condemning what happened to Pretzel are paying for things just as horrific to happen to others like him.

They’re paying into industries where newly hatched male chicks are ground up alive because they cannot lay eggs. Where individuals have the sensitive tips of their beaks burned or cut away. Where hens spend their lives in cages so small they cannot even spread their wings, their bones becoming so fragile from intensive egg production that they fracture. Where others are bred to grow so unnaturally large and fast that some can no longer support their own body weight, left struggling to stand on legs that cannot carry them. Where individuals develop painful sores from sitting in waste-soaked litter, are grabbed by their legs and thrown into transport crates, shackled upside down, and have their throats cut. Some are still alive when they enter the scalding water meant to strip the feathers from their bodies.

This isn’t an occasional act of cruelty. It’s the systematic suffering of billions of individuals, carried out every single day. We live in a world where someone can be outraged that a chicken was thrown from a building, then sit down and eat the body of another who endured unimaginable suffering before being killed. Somehow, only one of those things is considered cruel.

Is it any wonder the contradiction goes unnoticed? We’ve been surrounded by it our entire lives. The commercials, the traditions, the jokes, the smiling cartoon animals selling us their own bodies. An entire culture that has taught us to see some suffering as cruelty and other suffering as simply the way things are.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy isn’t that we fail to recognize cruelty. It’s that we’ve normalized some forms of it so completely that we no longer recognize them as cruelty at all.

10/12/2026

The difference between someone and something is how we choose to see them.

What if the only thing standing between them and an entirely different world exists only in our minds?

10/11/2026

🪶 You don’t have to live at Haven Hill to be part of Haven Hill. ❤️

That’s what the Feathers & Furlanthropy Club is all about.

It’s our community of monthly supporters—the people who choose to stand behind this sanctuary and its residents not just once, but month after month.

When you join, you become part of the reason the bowls stay full. Part of the vet care. Part of the warm bedding, the safe houses, the medications, the repairs, and all the ordinary little things that add up to an extraordinary promise: They are safe here for life.

There’s no minimum amount to belong. $5 a month. $10 a month. $25 a month. Whatever feels right to you. When enough people choose to give a little consistently, it becomes something incredibly powerful.

And because we want our members to have a little piece of Haven Hill with them, members who give $10 or more per month will receive instructions after their second monthly gift to claim a free Haven Hill Animal Sanctuary T-shirt. 🐓

But the best part isn’t the shirt.

It’s knowing that every time you see one of our residents pop up on your feed, like Luigi, you’re part of their story, too.

🪶 Join the Feathers & Furlanthropy Club.

Come be part of something that gives them everything they were always supposed to have: A home. A future. And the promise that they’ll never be disposable again. ❤️

Links to sign up in our links section on Facebook and in our bio on Instagram.

10/09/2026

There’s something about walking into a veterinary clinic with a chicken that makes people look twice.

We’re used to it by now. Dogs walk through the door and no one gives it a second thought. Cats arrive in carriers and no one wonders why they’re there. Walk in carrying a hen, though, and you can almost see the question on people’s faces.

A chicken? At the vet?

Every time we do it, I like to think it’s a tiny little demonstration of something that shouldn’t be remarkable at all: compassion doesn’t have a species requirement.

Maybe someone sees Smidge sitting there waiting for her turn and, for just a second, sees a hen differently. Not as food. Not as a source of eggs. Not as “just a chicken.” As a patient. An individual. Someone whose health matters enough to make an appointment for.

Smidge had her first veterinary visit since arriving at Haven Hill this week. As part of her overall wellness exam, she was checked for internal parasites and given a thorough examination. Overall, she’s doing well, which is exactly what we hoped to hear.

We also got a little more information about something we already suspected. Smidge is primarily blind. Her veterinarian confirmed that her pupils do not respond to light the way they normally should. It’s possible that she can see some shadows, but we’ll probably never know exactly how much of the world around her she can see.

The wonderful thing about Smidge is that she doesn’t seem particularly concerned about any of that. She gets around, finds what she needs, explores, eats, and makes a mess of those adorable little cheek feathers. She is simply learning her world in the way that works for her.

Farmed animals are so often overlooked when it comes to veterinary care. Hens and roosters are domesticated animals just like the cats and dogs we share our homes with, yet they are often treated very differently because of how we have been taught to see them.

We also know that finding veterinary care for birds isn’t always easy. Avian care simply isn’t available everywhere, and sometimes finding someone willing and able to treat a hen or rooster can be a challenge in itself. That makes the veterinarians who do provide this care even more important.

At Haven Hill, we see Smidge as an individual whose health matters. When something is wrong, she deserves medical care. When she needs help, she deserves to receive it. Her life isn’t worth less because she was born into the body of an animal our society decided to use.

So yes, she’s a chicken at the vet. We hope someday nobody finds that unusual.

Send Smidge a little love in the comments and help us spread this message far and wide. Maybe this reaches someone who already takes their chickens to the vet but still feels a little uncomfortable walking through that door because it isn’t considered “normal.” Maybe it reaches someone who has simply never thought about taking a chicken to the vet before. Let’s make veterinary care a little more normal for the next chicken who needs it. ❤️

10/08/2026

They say we give animals too many human emotions. We think we’ve spent far more time pretending they don’t have any.

We hear it all the time. We’re giving them too much credit. We’re assigning feelings to them that aren’t really there. We’re seeing human emotions in animals instead of simply accepting that they don’t experience the world the way we do.

Of course they don’t experience the world exactly the way we do. They experience it the way they do. They feel fear. They seek safety. They form relationships. They have preferences. They experience stress when their environment changes. They recognize individuals they trust. They seek comfort when they’re overwhelmed. They remember what has frightened them and learn where they feel safe.

Wilhelmina has been reminding us of that lately. She’s integrating with a new flock, and that can be scary. There are unfamiliar personalities, new relationships and boundaries she hasn’t figured out yet. When things become overwhelming, she looks for someone she trusts. Sometimes she hides behind us. Sometimes she jumps onto us. Sometimes she climbs straight into a lap.

She is afraid, and she seeks safety. Fear is an emotion. Trust is too.

Maybe we’ve been taught to minimize the emotional lives of other animals because doing so makes everything else easier. It’s easier to exploit someone when we convince ourselves that what happens to them doesn’t affect them emotionally. It’s easier when fear becomes “instinct,” distress becomes “behavior,” relationships become meaningless, and their desire for safety and comfort somehow matters less because they aren’t human.

If we convince ourselves they don’t really know the difference, we don’t have to think quite as hard about the choices we make for them. Wilhelmina knows the difference. She knows the difference between feeling afraid and feeling safe. She knows the difference between someone she isn’t sure about and someone she trusts. When her world feels overwhelming, she makes a choice about where she wants to be. Sometimes, she chooses us.

We don’t need her emotions to look exactly like ours to believe they matter. We just need to pay attention when she tells us they do.

10/07/2026

Did you know Haven Hill has an entire maintenance department? It does. It’s one guy. 🤭

I call him the Sanctuary Spouse, and frankly, we’re considering trademarking him. It’s not technically an official Haven Hill position, but somewhere along the way we appointed him anyway. He has accepted his volunteer role with remarkably little protest. 😂

Around here, when something breaks, needs to be built, needs to be installed, or we come up with another one of those “Would it be possible to…” ideas, there’s really only one solution: go get the Sanctuary Spouse. Put him in front of the problem, give him a little time, and somehow the problem gets solved.

This time, the problem was electricity. The duplex that houses Freedom’s and Mr. McGee’s flocks hasn’t had electricity, so when we’ve needed power out there for things like fans, we’ve been making do with a rather sad little extension cord. With North Dakota winter approaching and the time to start getting heaters ready coming quickly, electricity to the duplex had moved pretty high up the list.

So we went and got the Sanctuary Spouse, and now the duplex has electricity. ❤️

Scott has a huge role at Haven Hill, even though most of it happens where you never see it. He builds things, fixes things, installs things, repairs things, hauls things, and when we come up with something we need but have absolutely no idea how to make happen, more often than not, he figures it out. While you may not see him very often on this page, his work is everywhere at Haven Hill.

He also has very little interest in having his picture plastered across sanctuary social media, which presented a slight problem for a Sanctuary Spouse appreciation post. Thankfully, Mario was available, so please accept him as an equally impressive, significantly more feathered substitute. 😂

Thank you, Scott, for everything you do behind the scenes to keep Haven Hill running and our residents safe and comfortable. We couldn’t do what we do without you. ❤️

Please help us thank our entire maintenance department in the comments below. We’d like to keep employee morale high enough that he continues showing up for his unpaid, 24/7, nights-weekends-and-holidays-included volunteer position, where the hours are terrible, the pay is nonexistent, and management keeps coming up with new projects. 😂❤️

Before any other sanctuaries get ideas, the Sanctuary Spouse is not available for adoption, transfer, fostering, borrowing, or any other arrangement. We’re keeping him. 😉❤️

10/06/2026

Rescue means seeing things you wish you could unsee. It also means getting to witness moments like this. ❤️

In sanctuary and rescue, we talk about a lot of hard things. The abandonment. The cruelty. The loss. The animals who arrive carrying stories we wish they never had to live through. So when something really, really good happens, we want to talk about that, too.

When Pippa came to Haven Hill, one of our biggest hopes was that Carly and Simon would take her in. These two have such gentle hearts, and after watching the way they welcomed Delilah into their little family, we hoped more than anything that they might do the same for Pippa.

Pippa waited almost a year and a half in the shelter for someone to choose her. A year and a half. Now, just a short time after coming home, this is happening. ❤️

That’s Pippa and Simon lying together. They’re choosing each other. They’re getting comfortable. They’re becoming family.

Yes, we know. They’re cats. The internet has approximately seventeen billion cat pictures already. Our cat posts rarely get the attention our feathered residents do, but we couldn’t not share this one.

Someday, we’re hoping to look over and find Carly, Simon, and Pippa all piled into that bed together, just like Carly and Simon once did with Delilah. No one will ever replace Delilah. We miss her every single day, and the little family they had with her will always be theirs. There’s something incredibly beautiful about watching two cats who loved her make room in their lives for someone new.

Maybe there’s something beautiful about Pippa’s story, too. She waited a year and a half to be chosen. That wait didn’t mean there was something wrong with her. It didn’t mean she was too difficult, too damaged, or somehow less deserving of a home. Sometimes the right home just hasn’t found them yet.

Pippa is finding her place, and it looks like she may have found her family, too. ❤️

Our cats may not usually get quite as much attention around here, so let’s change that today. Show Pippa and Simon some love and remind these two that the cats of Haven Hill deserve a little spotlight, too. ❤️

10/05/2026

✨MEET THE HAVEN HILL HUMANS ✨

Last, but definitely never least by any stretch of the imagination, in our Meet the Haven Hill Humans series is Amy, one of our Board Directors!

As the founder of Chicken Butt Microsanctuary, Amy brings invaluable nonprofit and sanctuary experience to Haven Hill — but what she brings to our residents goes far beyond that. She is our go-to person when we need another experienced perspective on everything from a bird’s health and care to flock dynamics, introductions, integrations, and all of the little complexities that come with giving each individual the best life possible.

Amy is an incredible animal advocate, a trusted source of knowledge, and someone we are incredibly fortunate to have helping guide Haven Hill and the care we provide our residents.

Meet Amy!

Amy has been a dedicated vegan and animal advocate for more than 13 years. She currently works as a Campaign Manager with Animal Rights Coalition.

Over the years, Amy has volunteered with Chicken Run Rescue, served on the boards of Soul Space and Rooster Redemption, and also performed the role as Care Coordinator for Rooster Redemption before their move out of state. She is also the founder of Chicken Butt Microsanctuary, and immensely loves her chicken friends.

Beyond her sanctuary and advocacy work, Amy moderates a Minnesota Facebook community that connects chicken rescuers and helps birds in need find safe homes. Her passion for chickens, veganism, and supporting the sanctuary community makes her a wonderful addition to the Haven Hill board.

10/04/2026

After careful consideration, we have reached a conclusion.

Scout is perfect.

Now, please stop making more of him.

10/03/2026

The animal agriculture industry needs you to never meet them.

It needs a hen to remain an egg carton, a pig to remain bacon, a cow to remain beef, and a calf to remain dairy. Because products are easy to consume. Individuals are harder to forget.

Once she’s Ricki, and you know which friends she chooses, or he’s Freedom, and you know what makes him feel safe, the distance starts to disappear. Once he’s Pretzel, and you know what gets him running across the yard, or she’s Sophia, and you’ve watched her heal, trust, and build a life of her own, they stop being interchangeable members of a species. They become individuals you know.

You notice that they choose their friends. They have favorite foods. They get excited. They become afraid. They seek comfort. They establish boundaries. They learn who they trust. The more you know them, the harder it becomes to reduce an entire life to what their body can “produce for us.”

Maybe that’s part of why sanctuary can make people uncomfortable. Sanctuary challenges the distance we’ve been taught to keep between the animal and the product. It doesn’t ask you to look at an egg carton and imagine a hen. It introduces you to the hen. It doesn’t ask you to imagine that animals are individuals. It lets you meet them.

Today is World Day for Farmed Animals—a day to recognize the individuals whose lives are so often hidden behind the products made from their bodies.

Once you’ve met the someone, it becomes much harder to see only the something.

That may be the most dangerous thing a sanctuary can do: introduce you to the someone an industry needs you to see as something.

Haven Hill Animal Sanctuary

10/13/2026

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10/09/2026

10/08/2026

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