Dunedin vet nurse Katie Prasad now has a flock of 29 chickens in the backyard of her home in the Glen.
She still hopes to re-home most of the 17 she adopted from Otago Peninsula’s Bloem Farm.
Thousands of the farm’s chickens were at risk of being culled because of the implementation of new cage standards, which had been disrupted by Covid-19 related delays.
But at least one of the chickens will be joining Ms Prasad’s home flock after she forged a strong bond with Penny — "she’s my couch chicken".
Bloem Farm owner Pieter Bloem had warned her Penny was not very well, but Ms Prasad — a vet nurse for 15 years — was undeterred.
"She’s still here and loving it."
She had worked closely with Mr Bloem to co-ordinate the re-homing of as many chickens as she could.
She used social media response to promote the re-homing, which allowed her to reach more people than she could by word of mouth.
The response had been amazing.
While some posts attracted mixed opinions, she kept her efforts focused on finding new homes for the "very, very cool chooks".
For about two months she had been getting hundreds of messages a day from animal lovers, and even had inquiries from North Islanders wanting to help.
Lots of people who were passionate about giving the chickens a chance, including some charity groups, had come through to re-home the birds.
She could not take credit for all of the re-homed birds, she said.
Now the chickens were scattered across the South Island and she was constantly receiving pictures of them from their new homes in Invercargill, Central Otago and North Canterbury.
"It’s been really good — a real journey."
She was grateful for the efforts Mr Bloem went to to re-home the chickens.
"He genuinely cares about his animals."
Mr Bloem said the re-homing efforts were "pretty amazing".
"I didn’t think we would get there."
However, it was disappointing the chickens were at risk of having to be culled in the first place.
About 4000 chickens had gone to members of the public, and he would be keeping about 240 of the remaining birds as a domestic flock.
