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Now imagine that you provide sanctuary for former prisoners of the industrial food complex. You are able to provide land, barns, food, medical supplies, attention, love and care. You live but three hours from where the devastation occurred, three short hours from where hens are currently in an advanced stage of danger. What would you do? What would you do if your space and resources were a little tight,
you'd just had a baby a few months before, you had no idea how
you could finance this, but the director of Buckeye had reluctantly
agreed to let you take as many hens as you could physically carry
home? If you If you are like Cayce and Jason of Ooh-Mah-Nee Farm, there'd be no hesitation about what to do. You'd get on the phone, start renting trucks, contact other animal sanctuaries, and initiate the four-week-long rescue that saved over 6,000 hens, the largest and most well-coordinated farmed animal rescue in history. I first learned of the Buckeye rescue last year, when Cayce contacted Vegan Street and asked if I could write a story about their efforts. Reading the materials Ooh-Mah-Nee had provided, I grew more and more impressed with the scope of their rescue, and their unwavering dedication. For every day they were at Buckeye, they had to drive three hours to Croton, Ohio, find hens and get them comfortable in their trucks, maintain contact with the press and other sanctuaries, coordinate the rescue efforts, drive three hours back to Pennsylvania, unload the hens, wash and dry the trucks, return them and rent them for the next day. For four weeks. They also had to keep business-as-usual running at their farm, as there are over 1,500 cows, turkeys, ducks, chickens, goats, sheep, rabbits and pigs who depend on their care.
Ooh-Mah-Nee Farm is located in Hunker, PA, not far from the West Virginia border, on 94 acres of gently rolling hills. Cayce and her mother founded Ooh-Mah-Nee, a play on the word humane, in early 1996, when they adopted their first five cows from Farm Sanctuary. Cayce had volunteered and interned at Farm Sanctuary's New York location, and she considers Gene and Lori Bauston to be her heroes and mentors. Cayce and her mom had originally planned to buy land in order to offer permanent an adoption space for Farm Sanctuary animals, and lighten their load.
"Shortly after their arrival, word got out that we were offering life-long sanctuary to farmed animals and the phone just started ringing." From there it just snowballed. They started assisting and conducting humane investigations, and receiving more animals, such as the 91 chickens living in filthy conditions at a live poultry market. Today these chickens are scratching the earth on Ooh-Mah-Nee's farm, stretching their wings and giving themselves dust baths, worlds away from the market that was so atrocious that Cayce and Jason actually had the authority to claim the birds.
It struck me as we walked around Ooh-Mah-Nee, letting the essence of the land envelop me, that this was at its core a place of freedom, a place where animals could just be. Every being there, human and non-human alike, seemed imbued with a vitality and sense of peace that comes from a true freedom of spirit.
Cayce's mom, Maggie, left Ooh-Mah-Nee several years ago to concentrate on other efforts to assist animals, including running a guinea pig rescue out of two converted greenhouses on her property. She also recently opened a wonderful vegetarian and organic restaurant in Ligonier, PA, about 20 minutes from the farm, called Maggie's Mercantile. Jason, Cayce's partner and the father of their son Aiden, came on several years ago and really helped to get the farm's systems in place. Cayce and Jason have seen tremendous transformations take place through their work on the farm. There's the story about the woman who bred Nubian goats for milk, and had an epiphany one day as the man she'd just sold some baby goats to drove off, and she could hear them screaming in the car, their legs bound. She realized with no uncertainty that they were going to be killed for their meat, and she couldn't justify it any more. The woman was referred to Ooh-Mah-Nee, and they helped her place her remaining goats in sanctuaries, including their own. She has since become a vegan.
"I think the first time an animal actually has his eyes looked into by a human being when they come here, it's probably the first time anyone respectfully addressed them, saying, I acknowledge that you are a living being and I'm just here to make you comfortable, make sure you're happy and healthy. It's almost as though then they start to acknowledge themselves again, because they'd put themselves in a shell where they were detached. They'd become numb, and here they can snap back into the joy of being that was taken away from them at an early age." Cayce and Jason also offer animals the chance to trust humans again. "I've witnessed something really extraordinary in the past years with these animals who have never known kindness or safety or security. You bring these animals in and they're not trusting. But then you notice they can just release. It's like there's something in the air, telling them that they can just relax for the first time. I saw this with a goat who was so nervous coming out here, and the minute she got close enough to see the other animals and kind of check out what was going on, all of the sudden she just relaxed. Like, Okay, these animals aren't stressed. There must be something that's okay here. They know that they are safe here, and I think that's one of the greatest rewards. They definitely know that they found sanctuary."
The Buckeye rescue was by far their biggest challenge to date. Buckeye is an enormous factory farm complex, supplying 4 percent of the nation's eggs. Millions live at the Ohio facility alone, and Cayce was staggered by what she saw. "We pulled up to this place not knowing what to expect and we were just devastated. It was the most intensive animal factories I'd ever seen. You'd look at one of these buildings, and there were just rows and rows and rows and tiers of chickens just crammed in these cages. Buildings were so dilapidated from the tornado that the hens were trapped and smashed under the cages, hanging halfway out. The ones on the lowest had it hardest, of course. They were gassed, crushed or bulldozed, or sold to Campbell's Soup for slaughter." Every day for four weeks, they woke in the morning, knowing that this was what they would face. The thought of rescuing as many hens as they possibly could spurred them on. Cayce spoke movingly of these gentle hens, who were imprisoned from hatching on down to when they were slaughtered, treated as though they were nothing more than egg laying machines. The triumph of their spirit over the brutality they'd known is an inspiration to all.
Ooh-Mah-Nee Farm is truly one of the most idyllic places I've ever had the good fortune of visiting. Jason, Cayce and the entire crew deserve enormous praise for the work they've done and continue to do. More than anything, though, they need support from us so they can replenish their resources and offer the highest quality of care possible. Please consider giving a donation to Ooh-Mah-Nee, as it is truly money well spent. They can be contacted at www.oohmahneefarm.org or 724-755-2420.
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Imagine getting a fax like this from the Humane Society: There's
been a tornado in Ohio that's struck the Buckeye Egg Farm, destroying
12 of its 150 laying facilities. The hens inside are trapped in
battery cages, being smothered, slowly dying of injuries, dehydration,
hunger. The 12 destroyed warehouses are collapsed around 100,000
hens, and with each minute you wait, the likelihood of suffering
increases.
saw that Buckeye's method of humane slaughter of these birds
included dropping thousands of live hens by the bulldozer-full
into large dumpsters to be gassed?
We met Cayce (pronounced Casey) and her partner Jason at the Animal
Rights 2001 Conference, when Cayce came up to the Vegan Street
booth and introduced herself. When we mentioned that we had a
week between when AR 2001 ended and the NAVS Summerfest in Johnstown,
Pennsylvania began, Cayce and Jason said that we must visit Ooh-Mah-Nee
for at least a day, and that we were welcome to spend the night
there. We happily took them up on their offer.
However, as Cayce told me,
When we visited in early July, they were in the middle of their
summer chores, which includes running fences, working on new barns,
improving old ones. In the winter, the animals are more sedentary,
usually staying in their enclosures, which means that the staff
concentrates more on cleaning, in addition, of course, to the
daily necessities of food, water, medication.
"By the time we got back here and unloaded them, to see them
learn to walk was just the most beautiful thing in the world.
The first time they took their first steps, their legs were so
weak and atrophied, they were like little babies learning to walk.
An hour later they were jumping up in the air and flapping their
wings, celebrating life and celebrating freedom. We were all crying.
They were celebrating that freedom that they never knew was out
there."
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