Nelson Zandbergen
Farmers Forum
SOUTH HURON — Call it Huron County’s great chick robbery. But what possessed a group of thieves to spend the time and effort needed to steal 30,000 boot-high broiler chicks — worth a combined $42,000 — from a South Huron farm in the wee hours of the morning?
The highly unusual avian heist on April 20 required 8 to 10 people during the 2:20 a.m. to 8 a.m. time window estimated by the farm owner, according to Huron County OPP. The thieves spent hours rounding up the 15-day-old birds from within one isolated barn and loading them onto at least one large climate-controlled truck — and possibly more — before making their getaway.
The motivation of the operators is “unknown at this time,” Huron County OPP Const. Greg Soldan told Farmers Forum May 1, reporting no breaks in the case.
One industry worker said that he was thoroughly acquainted with these types of barns and that it would typically have security systems and/or closed-circuit cameras, making it extremely difficult to clean out a barn without triggering alarms.
He said that a full crew of “catchers” could load out 30,000 six-week-old broilers in one hour. But loading out such immature birds would take much longer and with a disastrous mortality rate.
“I can’t fathom it,” said Napanee-area egg producer Max Kaiser, when asked for his take on the crime. “This was ballsy but what was the plan? What, when, how, why? I can’t imagine a plan that accommodates 30,000 birds.”
While not a meat-bird producer, Kaiser is no stranger to the general chicken industry. He noted the sheer scale of the theft would be hard to hide from the relatively small number of players in Ontario’s supply-managed poultry meat sector. When the birds are ready for market in another 6 to 8 weeks, do folks expect to roll up to a mainline slaughter facility with 30,000 stolen chickens? “There might be some questions asked,” he said. “It’s not that big of an industry. Sooner or later, somebody’s going to know something.”
He highlighted the logistical challenges of stealing that many chicks in one shot, suggesting the thieves could have stuffed them tightly into cages aboard one 15-foot truck or trailer over a three- or four-hour period. But that illegal setup would have caused many losses from smothering. An additional truck or two might have been required, he said.
The stolen chicks, at 15 days old, would be “taller than the top of your work boot,” he said. While not as delicate as day-old chicks, they’re still susceptible to dying from chills as well as from overheating in improperly ventilated spaces.
Conversely, the thieves could have used even more trucks and dispensed with cages and let the birds run over the floor. But some birds would jam in the corners and also die, according to Kaiser.
Though he can’t imagine “any accredited business” would be involved, he suggested the thieves may have known about industry tricks of the trade, such as the portable fences commonly used on-farm to direct chickens toward a barrel “so you can pull them out.”
He agreed it was possible the thieves might be raising the birds themselves and marketing and slaughtering them in smaller groups. This was not the doing of animal rights activists, he said.
The Chicken Farmers of Ontario, while acknowledging the “unfortunate situation,” declined comment on case details, saying the matter is under police investigation. The organization asks anyone with information about the case to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS.
