Shipped Chicks Dying In Delayed Mail, Horrifying Farmers

Thousands of chicks being delivered to New England farms are arriving dead amid Postal Service delays, horrified farmers are reporting.

At least 4,800 chicks shipped to Maine through the U.S. Postal Service  were dead on arrival in recent weeks following service and equipment cuts, a local lawmaker told the Portland Press Herald.

Maine farmer Haden Gooch told Bloomberg that he has received 500 dead chicks in his last two shipments. Over six years of farming, he can’t remember losing more than 25 in a shipment before.

“I’m kind of freaked out. For me, that’s a significant loss,” Gooch said.

Poultry farmer Pauline Henderson told the Portland newspaper that all 800 chicks sent to her from a hatchery in Pennsylvania were dead by the time they arrived. She said thousands of other chicks died on their way to other farms in Maine and New Hampshire.

Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) said her office has received dozens of complaints from farmers and from Maine residents who raise chickens in their backyards. Pingree is sending a letter Friday to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and Agricultural Secretary Sonny Perdue,  asking them to take action immediately.

“Imagine, you have young kids and they are getting all excited about having a backyard flock and you go to the post office and that’s what you find,” Pingree told the Press Herald.

Chicken hatcheries have long relied on the mail to deliver newly hatched chicks. Typically, remarkably few fail to survive.

The vast number of dead baby birds are a horrifying consequence of what Democratic lawmakers say is deliberate sabotage by President Donald Trump and his handpicked postmaster general to destabilize the USPS ahead of a deluge of mail-in votes amid the COVID-19 crisis. Trump has said he believes mail-in votes favor Democrat Joe Biden .