Sanctuary Stories

The Chickens Who Became TV Stars Instead of Dinner

Melief Sanctuary in Germany provides a safe landing for over 1,200 animals — including 20 chickens who were saved for the spotlight

Photos provided by Melief Animal Sanctuary unless noted

As several Spanish guard dogs, each about 200 pounds and as gentle as could be, pace among the more than 1200 animals at Melief Sanctuary, owner Marc Winters is explaining his worries about the wolves. The sanctuary is in northern Germany — prime wolf country — and the majority of his residents are the most vulnerable: birds, including painfully oversized turkeys, a barn of 200 abandoned roosters, and over 500 hens, many likely backyard egg-layers, dumped due to no longer being productive. The giant dogs, most of them rescued from Spanish shelters, keep the birds —as well goats, cows, rabbits, pigs, ponies and other animals — safe, a feeling most had not known before coming to Melief.

Winters, along with his husband Lothar Vermeulen, first started saving animals in 2003, when they moved from the city of Rotterdam, out to the Dutch countryside. “We love animals, and in 2003 we were transitioning…