Shipped Chicks Dying In Delayed Mail, Horrifying Farmers

Thousands of newly hatched chicks shipped through the mail have arrived dead amid the Postal Service slowdown. "I'm kind of freaked out," said one farmer.
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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.

Pingree said the chicks were victims of the “chaos they’ve created at the post office [that] nobody thought through when they were thinking of slowing down the mail.”

Slowed mail is also creating first-ever delays of medicines. Online pharmacy Honeybee Health said about 20% of patients who order delivery via first-class mail have experienced delays.

Trump last week admitted he is blocking a desperately needed infusion of funds to the cash-strapped Postal Service to cripple mail-in voting by Americans hoping to avoid the risk of COVID-19 at polling stations.

DeJoy banned overtime and imposed new limits on mail delivery times in an internal memo last month. In addition, the USPS began dismantling some 15% of its automated mail-sorting machines that help speed delivery — and scores of letter collection boxes in a number of states were ripped out.

After an outcry, DeJoy promised that he’ll hold off on further cuts until after the election. But he isn’t reversing cuts or bringing back eliminated equipment, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Wednesday.

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