Thousands of chicks arrive dead at farms after USPS budget cuts

The US postal system is in the spotlight ahead of the election, but now the post office’s boss is ruffling farmers’ feathers too.

A USPS sign outside an office. Picture: Nicholas Kamm / AFP)

Chicken farmers in Maine received thousands of dead chicks sent via the United States Postal Service after the agency’s budget was slashed by its new leader, according to a report.

At least 4,800 of the adorable fluffballs arrived lifeless at poultry farms across the state after being shipped alive in breathable boxes from hatcheries, according to the Portland Press Herald.

The chickens were shipped alive but sadly not delivered that way.

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“Can you 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?’’ Congresswoman Chellie Pingree, of North Haven, squawked to the paper.

“This is a system that’s always worked before and it’s worked very well until these [cuts] started being made.”

Farmer Pauline Henderson, who owns Pine Tree Poultry in New Sharon, was stunned when 800 chicks she ordered from Pennsylvania showed up as carcasses last week.

“Usually they arrive every three weeks like clockwork,” she told the paper. “And out of 100 birds, you may have one or two that die in shipping.”

A Washington D.C. office of the US Postal Service. Picture: Nicholas Kamm / AFP

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Thousands more sent via the Postal Service’s processing centre in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, also arrived dead — costing farms in Maine and New Hampshire thousands of dollars, the paper reported.

Pingree blamed the heartbreaking and wasteful deliveries on the agency’s embattled new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy.

“It’s one more of the consequences of this disorganisation, this sort of chaos they’ve created at the post office and nobody thought through when they were thinking of slowing down the mail,” Pingree said.

She said her office has received dozens of complaints from farmers and families raising small backyard flocks.

A USPS worker collects mail from a Manhattan post bin. Picture: Dia Dipasupil / Getty Images / AFP

DeJoy ordered cuts and operational changes after he took over the independent agency in June, changes which have disrupted mail deliveries nationwide.

He has come under fire in recent weeks for allegedly trying to sabotage the postal system ahead of the 2020 presidential election — forcing him to temporarily suspend some of those cost-cutting moves this week.

On Tuesday, DeJoy vowed to halt some changes made to overtime and equipment until after the November election. He is scheduled to testify before the Senate on Friday.

The Postal Service is the only mail service that ships live chicks and has done so since 1918, according to the agency’s website. If they are packaged properly, the agency will also ship baby ducks, emus and geese.

This article originally appeared on the New York Post and was reproduced with permission.