Last week Pauline Henderson was shocked when she picked up a shipment of what was supposed to be 800 live chicks from her post office in New Sharon, ME, reports the Portland Press Herald.
Henderson, who owns and operates Pine Tree Poultry, a family farm and chicken meat processing facility, said all 800 chicks sent from a hatchery in Pennsylvania were dead.
What was once a reliable and safe method of transporting chicks has apparently been undermined by widespread overhauls of operations at the U.S. Postal Service, including cutbacks in sorting equipment, ending extra trips by carriers and an edict to end all overtime by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy.
She said thousands of birds that moved through the Postal Service’s processing center in Shrewsbury, MA, all met the same fate, affecting several farms in Maine and New Hampshire.
