The Great Chicken Healer

Celeste Walker once believed she and her husband Ricky would retire and live peaceful lives on a sailboat at sea. Instead they moved across the island, joined a few animal rescue groups, and have since rescued, rehabilitated, and housed thousands of chickens, birds, and other animals in need.

“It was my preference to live on the boat,” Celeste said. “That was my goal to retire and go on the sailboat and live a nice, peaceful life, but there was something else calling us. We came here and I slowly started collecting chickens.”

Celeste boasts a lifelong love of animals, not only limited to the louder, feathered variety. Growing up in Hawaiʻi Kai, she wasn’t surrounded by wild chickens, but found herself in the epicenter of the chicken rescue demand when she and Ricky bought their property on the Westside of Oʻahu. Her sprawling land wasn’t as organized and striking as it is today.

“This was property nobody wanted,” She explained. “You could walk past the front gate and not know there was a house here, it was so bombarded with weeds and Kiawe. The price was right and we said okay. It took almost two years to clear all the land.”

And clear the land they did with purchased and rented tractors and countless days cleaning and weeding the unwanted foliage. As Celeste and Ricky made their previously undesirable land into a home, she became more active in the animal rescue space with Hawaiʻi Bird Rescue, Hawaiʻi Chicken Rescue, and Trooper’s Chicken Rescue to name a few. Celeste “realized there was an overwhelming need for someone to not just rescue and help the chickens, but a long-term place for them to be because nobody has property where they can keep them. I thought ‘we can do this, this is what we can do.’ I just started taking them and trying to make them better and release them on property.’”

While Celeste’s love for animals has remained a constant in her life, her previous professional experiences and careers were in nursing, first response, and business. “When I was younger, I was a registered nurse and a paramedic, and I also have my business administration degree because I did that while I was waiting to get into the nursing program,” Celeste said. Medical jobs run in the family. Celeste noted nearly every woman in her family works in nursing. But a severe back injury suffered while helping her sister on the mainland ended her human-focused careers. Many years after the injury, Celeste said she still can’t stand or walk too long.

Although she was forced to retire from her healthcare jobs due to her injury, Celeste utilized all of her medical knowledge once she began rescuing and rehabilitating chickens. Any observer of Celeste’s vast medical knowledge would wonder where she learned how to treat endless chicken and bird ailments, to which she credits her continued education and help from other rehabbers.

“There’s a MERCK manual for chickens and it’s very detail-oriented with physiology,” Celeste said. “Still to this day, every night I go over there and read. I read different things and try to figure things out. Sometimes I have a chicken or rooster with a condition I didn’t know about, and I would talk to other rehabbers and see what I could learn from them, but most of it is hands-on training and self-teaching.”

Celeste’s “handy dandy MERCK manual” has guided her through countless rescues. Her favorite success story with a rescued bird was the first time she got a rooster with a gaff wound from cockfighting, which went so deep it fractured the bone. She utilized the MERCK manual and figured out exactly how to care for the wound. Celeste noted she’d always loved caring for human wounds in her previous medical career, so the MERCK manual and her prior knowledge led to a successful result for the severely injured rooster.

Celeste is a pillar in the bird and chicken rescue communities, many members of whom are found in aforementioned groups on Facebook. As soon as a sick, injured, or traumatized bird is posted in a request for help online, most would believe Celeste will help and house them. As to how she became a household name in the rescue organizations, Celeste said word of mouth and her supportive comments offering rehabilitation help in the Facebook groups have eventually led to folks calling her as soon as a bird is in need. She’s even helped people in her nearby vicinity who fight chickens and ask her for medical attention for the birds. Since her name and number have become ubiquitous in the rescue groups, the population of rescued birds in her care and on property has boomed.

Since saving her first chicken, her favorite one is a Brahma named Kong. “He’s absolutely gorgeous and my favorite in the whole wild world, I love that little guy,” she said.  “He’s really sweet, he’s friendly, he lets me hold him and play with him. When I pick him up with two hands because he’s so big, he puts his head against me and I rub his feathers or his neck and he just falls asleep. His energy feels good.”

Celeste’s daily life is full of love, care, and attention for her countless rescue animals.

“I get up at 4 am and have my cup of coffee, then I go in my backyard, I start taking care of everybody and have tons of animals aside from chickens and birds,” Celeste said. “I have bunny rabbits, my husband bought me female and male geese, Muscovian mallard ducks, a stray cat that showed up and I have now. One time I had a great big turtle that we finally found a great home for. His name is Carl and he’s doing really good.”

And what does Celeste’s husband Ricky think of their animal sanctuary, you ask? “He enables me to do what I do!” Celeste beamed. “He’s so good, sometimes he’ll pick up birds or chickens or pigeons for me. He totally supports everything I do. He pays for my trips so I can look at eagles, he bought me a great viewing scope so I can look in the nests when baby eagles are born and see them from way across the marina. He totally supports me to do what I love.”

It’s true that although Celeste focuses much of her time on chickens, she has love for other animals like eagles and her favorite, the Common Waxbill. She said, “I have a thing for finches, I love love love finches and have a variety of different ones in my bird room. Some of them I’ve purchased myself from the pet store, but I have about 12 different varieties of finches.”

Everyone in the Oʻahu animal rescue world would believe the rescuing community would collapse without Celeste and Ricky Walker. Their dedication to providing top-notch medical care and attention and forever homes to animals in need is paramount to the success of those who love and help birds, chickens, and other furry and feathered beings. Trooper’s and the other animal rescue organizations Celeste frequents are extraordinarily lucky to have her on our side in the fight to save, protect, and provide places to live for the animals in Hawaiʻi. Celeste aims to continue her animal-full life with potential aspirations of expanding her education.

On her goals for the future, Celeste wants to “stick with Trooper’s, help with medical needs, help any way I can, anything I can do to help them out. I don’t see myself ever leaving chicken rescue, it’s just something I’m always going to continuously do. It would be my goal to continue my education in that direction possibly. Further my knowledge of chickens so I can help them out more.”