Meet Darla, the therapy chicken helping to educate her community

— -- Meet Darla. She's a therapy chicken, helping to educate people on treating animals more humanely.

Finn Proctor, 7, adopted the silkie chicken when she was just 3 weeks old from a farm. At the time, she looked very ill, Finn's mother Erika Proctor told ABC News.

"My son had found her ... looking very, very sick and he didn't want to leave without taking her home," Proctor explained.

So the Troy, Virginia, family decided to adopt Darla, who is now 2, along with two other chickens, who didn't survive.

Proctor, who is also the founder of a nonprofit organization that focuses on training therapy animals, Green Dogs Unleashed, said that after seeing how sweet Darla was, they decided to train her to be a therapy chicken.

"Darla is just so friendly, we started using her to do humane education," she explained. "We’re able to teach others about the care of animals and compassion for animals and how chickens can be pets too."

The mother of two added, "Chickens are more than food."

Proctor said that she and her son are passionate about teaching with Darla because "humane education is something that's really lacking in our school system."

"We’re able to go into schools, and camps and talk to kids about compassionate care," she added.

Adopting Darla has changed the family completely, even helping them become vegetarians.

"It's brought a whole new level of compassion. There's now 25 chickens and they all have names, they all have personalities. They're our pets," she gushed.