Chickens survive Camp Fire in California

This is a true story sent in to us by Sarah McFarland from Paradise in Northern California.  It is in Sarah’s own words and tells how her family and her chickens survived the Camp Fire in California.

On November 8th my life and my family’s lives changed forever when the #Campfire tore through our Northern California mountain town of Paradise destroying nearly 18,000 structures and taking over 80 lives.

Fire tore through Paradise on 8th November 2018

In one morning our world was turned upside down and it seems it will be many years until everything feels right side up again.

An aerial view of the devastation from the fires in Paradise

Against all odds, my home and my chickens’ home survived.

I am a nurse and I was at work the day of the fire leaving my husband to evacuate our 2 small children. They were able to get out safely, with the neighbors houses burning only 30 minutes after they left.

Our 10 sweet girls had to be left behind.

For weeks, we didn’t know what was left… if the girls made it.

When we were sent photos confirming that the house and the girls survived, we were flooded with disbelief and gratitude.

The fence around the coop burned and they endured weeks of hazardous air quality. An animal rescue group rounded up the girls into their coop and cared for them in place while we remained evacuated.

One month after the fire the evacuation was lifted and we were allowed to return. It will be months before it is safe to return to live in our home. The hazardous debris from all of the burned homes will take a year or more to remove and we don’t know when the water will be safe to drink again.

Sarah and her family

As a loving chicken owner, I had always walked out and opened the girls’ coop in the morning and closed it at night, but now that we are displaced from our home our poor girls have been cooped up except when we come to visit a few times per week.

I reached out to Nick with ChickenGuard and he was more than happy to help us help our poor girls to get out every day.

The ChickenGuard allows us to let our girls out every day

The silver lining of this situation has been that certain companies, certain people, have stepped forward and offered us a hand when we couldn’t get up on our own. We have been humbled and our hearts have been filled by those willing to help people they don’t even know.

ChickenGuard is one of those companies and although an automatic chicken coop door seems like something small in the contrast to all that was lost, it is bigger to us than I will ever be able to express. It gives my 10 sweet girls the freedom that they crave and the safety that they need.

Sarah and her ChickenGuard

From the very bottom of my heart, thank you Nick and everyone at ChickenGuard for your compassion and generosity. It won’t be forgotten.

Sarah’s children enjoying their flock