Around 200 animals helped Lisa Erikli through PTSD

Lisa Erikli says the animals at her family’s Eriklia activity farm in Hustadvika helped her cope with bullying and post-traumatic stress disorder, Dagbladet reports.

Erikli lives with her family and around 200 animals, including miniature pigs, rabbits, dogs, cats, chickens, turkeys, exotic birds, a donkey and Nordland horses. The farm is home to around 15 different species.

She has a dedicated room for her birds, which range from small budgerigars to large parrots and cockatoos. On particularly difficult days, Erikli goes there to talk to them.

“Even though they can be noisy at times, I feel a completely different sense of calm inside the bird room,” she says. “They come to me, talk to me, cuddle and are sociable.”

Erikli says she was bullied at lower secondary school, an experience that affected her throughout her teenage years and into adulthood. She now has a diagnosis of PTSD.

“I don’t know whether I would have managed if I hadn’t lived here at Eriklia and had all the animals around me. That’s how difficult it was,” she says.

She hopes others can experience the calm and security that animals have given her. “Something happens to us when we are around animals. Something happens inside us when we sit and cuddle an animal or watch one,” she says.

Erikli’s interest in birds began with a single cockatiel named Polly when she was 13 or 14. Polly became a close companion, and people later began asking whether she could take in more birds that needed new homes. Her goal is for the birds to have a good life at the farm until they grow old.

The Erikli family also breeds cats. One of the cats was sold to internationally recognised artist Alan Walker, although Erikli says she did not know who he was until after he had left.

The farm has around 50 Nordland horses, which the family describes as the world’s largest herd. In previous years, it had as many as 120.

A dog and a miniature pig from the farm have also become known on social media. One video of the unlikely companions received more than 9.1 million views on TikTok.

The miniature pig, Edina, had a difficult start in life. Her mother would not care for her, so Erikli took her in and bottle-fed her. Edina then became tame and developed a close attachment to the dogs.