(Beth Clifton collage)
Delaware disaster draws attention yet again to inhumanity of mailing live birds
CAMDEN, Delaware–“More than two thousand” chicks, survivors of as many as 17,000 abandoned for four days at a U.S. Postal Service distribution center circa April 29, 2025, remain at the First State Animal Center & SPCA, shelter director John Parana told media.
More than two weeks have elapsed since the baby birds were discovered in New Castle, Delaware, stuffed into 250 to 300 cardboard boxes aboard a tractor-trailer truck, long overdue for delivery.
“The Department of Agriculture investigator who was here when the birds were unloaded guessed that 8,100 birds were still alive,” Parana added.
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“Three & a half days with no food, no water, in extreme heat”
“A lot of them were dead on arrival due to being in the truck for three and a half days with no food, no water, and in extreme heat,” Parana said.
Explained WGAL reporter Anne Shannon, “The birds came from Freedom Ranger Hatchery, in Reinholds, Pennsylvania. The owners are still trying to figure out what went wrong.”
“Freedom Ranger Hatchery ships chicks out every Monday and Tuesday, except for holidays,” Shannon learned. “This shipment started out as one of their routine orders. It included chicks, turkeys, geese and quail, bound for 80 different destinations around the U.S., including in Texas, Ohio, and Florida.
“The hatchery didn’t know anything was wrong until the birds were discovered in Delaware,” Shannon relayed from a Freedom Ranger spokesperson.
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“Inside of the trailer was 130 degrees”
While the Freedom Rangers Hatchery company is headquartered in Reinholds, Pennsylvania, the baby birds actually came from a hatchery in West Cocalico Township, reported Lancaster Online staff writer Nathan Willison on May 14, 2025.
“The inside of the trailer with the birds was 130 degrees when found, according to the Delaware Department of Agriculture,” Willison added.
About 12,000 birds were dead, with 4,000 survivors, according to numbers Willison was given.
Freedom Ranger Hatchery objected to Willison in a written statement that, “The birds were then given out without permission to a shelter that was not adequately prepared to handle the birds and lost more after that.
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“Due to biosecurity concerns, the hatchery cannot take the chicks back.”
A Freedom Ranger Hatchery spokesperson told Associated Press reporter Mingson Lau that, “Due to biosecurity concerns, the hatchery cannot take the chicks back.”
“The spokesperson said it would have been best,” Lau wrote, “if USPS, after discovering the chicks, had completed delivery, as the recipients would have been adequately equipped to handle the birds — even if malnourished.”
But leaving the birds aboard the truck would have ensured more deaths from heat stress, while transferring them to other trucks would have significantly prolonged their suffering.
“We have been in contact with the Post Office but are struggling to get clear answers on this situation,” Freedom Ranger said.
Peking duckling chicks.
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“Too many to get an actual count”
The U.S. Postal Service issued a media statement saying simply, “We are aware of limited instances where there has been a breakdown in our processes and procedures with this type of shipment. We are actively investigating and identifying the cause. Local postal teams will work with affected customers to address their concerns and determine timely solutions for any issues with these shipments.”
Opened the First State Animal Center & SPCA in a May 3, 2025 emergency appeal to donors, “Yesterday we received between 3,000 to 5,000, estimated as there are too many to get an actual count, baby chicks of all kinds, including quail, geese, and mostly chickens.”
Parana “said the animal center has had to cover the costs of caring for the surviving birds and was told by Delaware’s agriculture department that there were no funds immediately available to assist the nonprofit,” wrote Willison.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has not actually picked up any of the Delaware chickens. (Beth Clifton collage)
“Rejected by distribution centers across the country”?
Updated Tiffani Amber of WBOC two days later, without citing a source, “The birds were stranded following shipping delays and repeated rejections from distribution centers across the country. Instead, the entire shipment was mistakenly sent to Delaware and left in a hot environment without food or water for more than three days.”
The First State Animal Center & SPCA on May 13, 2025 announced that the surviving birds were available for adoption, “but only a few hundred out of thousands have been picked up,” reported Mingson Lau six days later.
“Some have inquired about buying the birds for meat,” Lau mentioned, “but as First State Animal Center & SPCA is a no-kill shelter, those were refused.”
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State contract offers $5 a bird per day, but state has no money to pay it
The Delaware Department of Agriculture, Lau added, “shares a memorandum of understanding with the First State Animal Center as a state vendor. The department said it is responsible for assisting the shelter with funds. For chickens, the rate is $5 each per day.
“The department’s chief of planning, Jimmy Kroon, said negotiations were ongoing, but Parana claims that the department communicated that they had no funds to allocate for the chicks. Both acknowledged the original rate would be unreasonable in the current circumstances.
“They said that they’re going to try to go after the post office to get recoupment,” Parana told Lau. “That doesn’t help us in the meantime.”
(Beth Clifton photo/collage)
Guaranteed delivery within 72 hours of hatching
The U.S. Postal Service guarantees that day-old live birds sent by Priority Mail will be delivered within 72 hours of hatching.
Postal regulation 526, “Mailable Live Animals,” explains that “The following live, day–old animals are acceptable for mailing when properly packaged: chickens, ducks, emus, geese, guinea birds, partridges, pheasants (only during April through August), quail, and turkeys. All other types of live, day–old poultry are non-mailable.”
Postal regulation 526 goes on to detail exactly how live birds and other “mailable” animals are to be handled, and when.
But disasters such as the one in Delaware have occurred often before.
U.S. Representative Chellie Pingree.
“Investigate the recent deaths of thousands of mail-order chicks”
Chellie Pingree, a Democrat representing Maine’s Second Congressional District, on August 21, 2020 led 23 fellow members of the House of Representatives in asking then-postmaster general Louis DeJoy and Sonny Perdue, then U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, to “investigate the recent deaths of thousands of mail-order chicks,” and to take “immediate action to rectify this issue.”
Explained Pingree, “We have heard alarming reports that recent shipments of live chicks via the U.S. Postal Service have been severely delayed or mishandled, resulting in significant mortality losses. For example, one hatchery recently reported that a shipment of 4,800 chicks arrived in New England with 100% mortality.
Charged Pingree, “Losses from delays and mishandling are not only hugely problematic from an animal welfare perspective, but have also taken an emotional toll on the recipients.
“Hatcheries in multiple states have reported spending thousands of dollars to refund or replace orders for customers,” Pingree continued.
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The Hill was alive with the sound of crickets
But Pingree probably knew even before appealing to DeJoy and Perdue that their answer would likely be the sound of crickets, dead in transit along with the poultry with whom crickets are often shipped as potential prey, should the birds become hungry.
Pingree spoke two days after the Portland Press Herald reported that 800 chicks mailed to Pine Tree Poultry farmer Pauline Henderson, of New Sharon, Maine, from a hatchery in Pennsylvania, had all arrived dead.
“Usually,” Henderson said, “out of 100 birds you may have one or two who die in shipping.”
“Thousands of birds who moved through the Postal Service’s processing center in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, were also dead,” mentioned Associated Press, “impacting several farms in Maine and New Hampshire.”
Laura J. Nelson and Maya Lau of the Los Angeles Times reported the same day that, “Inside a massive mail-sorting facility in South Los Angeles, workers fell so far behind processing packages that gnats and rodents were swarming around containers of rotted fruit and meat, and baby chicks were dead inside their boxes.”
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“Between one and two percent don’t survive”
CentralMaine.com staff writer Rachel Ohm in a March 16, 2014 article described the deaths of 25 baby chicks whom Mercer, Maine farmer Dan Charles received days late from Moyer’s Chicks in Quakertown, Pennsylvania.
“Leon Moyer, owner of Moyer’s, said the company sends about 1.3 million chickens all over the world each year, including to Europe and Africa.
“He estimated that between one and two percent don’t survive, which amounts to 13,000 to 26,000 chickens,” Ohm mentioned.
Karen Davis & friends
(Beth Clifton)
2006 Zacky Farms case
Live poultry transport via the U.S. Postal Service has long been an issue of humane concern, especially since the advocacy organization United Poultry Concerns, founded in 1990 by author Karen Davis, began frequently decrying the practice.
(See Karen Davis, Ph.D., United Poultry Concerns founder, dead at 79.)
In 2006 the Peninsula Humane Society, of San Mateo, California, unsuccessfully sought cruelty charges against Northwest Airlines and also investigated pursuing cruelty cases against the Fresno turkey hatchery Zacky Farms and Air Canada.
The U.S. Postal Service was not directly named, but Northwest Airlines was believed to be at the time the leading transporter of live poultry for the postal service.
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Left their birds in San Francisco
“Hybrid Turkeys, a commercial breeder in Canada, shipped 11,520 turkey chicks on Northwest from Detroit,” explained Hong Dao Nguyen of the San Jose Mercury News. “The chicks, a few weeks old, were to be picked up at the San Francisco airport by Zacky Farms.”
“Hybrid instructed Northwest to divide the birds between two flights to California,” Peninsula Humane Society spokesperson Scott Delucchi told Nguyen. “Instead, Northwest stuffed all 144 boxes of fowl onto one four-and-a-half-hour flight,” leaving more birds competing for oxygen in the airliner hold.
“Nearly 2,000 chicks made it to Fresno,” Nguyen continued, “but a day later,” on July 14, 2006, “Northwest called Peninsula Humane to pick up 168 others who were left at the airport. All but 40 of them died.
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Gambled against the sun in Las Vegas
“Less than a week later, Hybrid shipped 9,360 chicks to San Francisco, this time via three Air Canada flights,” Nguyen reported. “When one plane made a pit stop in Las Vegas, the chicks were unloaded in 108-degree heat.”
“Zacky Farms left boxes containing an estimated 3,240 dead and dying birds at the San Francisco airport,” said a Farm Sanctuary media release, picking up the account.
“By the time the Peninsula Humane Society arrived, Northwest Airlines cargo workers had already thrown 26 of the 28 boxes into a trash compactor. In the two remaining boxes, investigators found 22 of 62 chicks still alive. Sadly, all but one died.”
The Farm Sanctuary facility at Orlands, California, took in 11 of the turkeys who survived the earlier incident.
Zacky Farms in 2007 lost 57,000 turkeys to a heat wave, in 2012 went through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and in 2019 was subsumed by Foster Farms.
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Airlines forced to continue hauling birds for post office
“Such deaths are routine but seldom publicized,” said Karen Davis. “Newborn birds are shipped by the U.S. Postal Service and the airlines as ‘perishable matter’ and treated like luggage. Millions of baby birds are delivered dead and dying each year,” Davis charged, “and postal workers who find boxes of suffering birds are forbidden by law from intervening. Northwest Airlines announced in 2001 that it would no longer carry chicks as mail, but the hatcheries persuaded Congress to force airlines,” including Northwest Airlines, to continue.
Northwest had stopped hauling chicks for the U.S. Postal Service after the postal service refused to triple the payment per pound of chicks carried from 31¢ to 93¢, to cover increased fuel and security costs.
(Beth Clifton collage)
U.S. Postal Service handles birds at a loss
Ironically, companies mailing live birds still pay a base rate of just 20¢ per pound.
American Airlines, Federal Express, United Airlines, and the United Parcel Service had already stopped hauling chicks when Northwest Airlines briefly quit, leaving Delta, U.S. Airways, and Continental as the only airlines that still flew live chicks for the Postal Service before Congress compelled the others to resume.
Federal legislation passed in mid-2000 requiring airlines to report all instances of animal loss, injury, or death in transit had already caused major airlines to seek ways to get out of the high-risk, low-return live animal traffic, even before the terrorist acts of September 11, 2001 required costly additional security measures.
Beyond keepers of backyard poultry flocks, major users of the postal service for bird delivery include cockfighters and operators of pheasant and quail shooting venues.
Oklahoma governor Kevin Stitt consorts with the Oklahoma Gamefowl Commission.
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Poultry industry has more clout than animal advocates
The Humane Farming Association and United Poultry Concerns, among many other animal advocacy organizations, have called for the abolition of live bird transport via the U.S. Postal Service for more than 35 years.
Animal Wellness Action has since November 16, 2022 recommended amendments to Section 26 of the Animal Welfare Act which would “halt the shipment of mature roosters through the U.S. mail, at least.
All has been so far to little avail.
Simply put, the poultry industry, including the illegal cockfighting part of the industry, has a lot more legislative clout than does animal advocacy.
Cockfighting gaffs.
Cockfighting paraphernalia seized, but not birds
But U.S. Customs & Border Protection did on May 3, 2025 intercept 10 pairs of leather cock spur covers and 10 cockfighting knife sheaths from the incoming international mail at the Cincinnati Port of Entry.
This rare interdiction of cockfighting-related postal traffic again spurred the question when, if ever, the taxpayer-funded U.S. Postal Service is going to enforce federal law already on the books since 2007 against anyone mailing gamefowl anywhere, at any stage of life.
(See Feds bust cockfighting spurs in the mail but ignore mailings of gamecocks.)
The main obstacle to enforcement, supposedly, is that while the U.S. Postal Service forbids transporting any “live animal for the purpose of participating in an animal-fighting venture,” postal employees have no way to distinguish birds mailed for one purpose from birds mailed for another.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Watch the weights
Yet there is a way.
Adult birds may be mailed via Priority Mail Express if weighing less than 25 pounds. This is more than twice the weight of a typical fighting gamecock.
Accordingly, one way to at least inhibit the fighting rooster traffic without either requiring postal workers to be experts in bird recognition, or interfering significantly in egg and hatchling commerce of any species, would be to simply lower the weight limit for birds in the mail to five pounds.
Few people other than cockfighters ever mail any birds after they reach anything approaching full adult weight.
Merritt & Beth Clifton with Henry the rooster.
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