Almost 5,000 chicks have arrived dead on arrival to Maine farmers due to recent delays in the United States Postal Service (USPS).
According to Democratic Representative Chellie Pingree, a slowdown of the USPS is to be attributed to at least 4,800 DOA chicks that have cost farmers in Maine thousands of dollars in losses. Rapid cuts have hit the federal mail carrier's operations of nationwide mail deliveries.
In a letter to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and United States Department of Agriculture Commissioner Sonny Perdue, Pingree, a Maine Democrat, is underscoring the issue of the DOA chicks and economic losses farms are now being fazed.
According to Pauline Henderson, owner of the Pine Tree Poultry in New Sharon, Maine, she was stunned last week when all of the 800 chicks sent to her from a Pennsylvania hatchery were dead.
The chicks regularly arrive every three weeks in a routine. Out of 100 birds, merely one or two possibly die in the shipping, Henderson said, reported The Philadelphia Inquirer.
The postal agency's spending plan was reportedly slashed by its new chief.
The chicks were initially shipped alive in hatcheries' breathable boxes.
Haden Gooch, who raises broiler chickens in a Monmouth farm in Maine stated that he received 500 dead chicks over his two most recent shipments. He lost an estimated fifth of his stock each time. Over the course of farming for six years, he cannot recall losing over 25 chicks in a shipment before.
According to Congresswoman Chellie Pingree of North Haven regarding the chicks that arrived dead, "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? This is a system that's always worked before and it's worked very well until these (cuts) started being made," reported News.com.au.
Pingree stated that her constituents were not expecting Postmaster General Louis DeJoy's command to cut down overtime pay for postal workers and the eventual delays his actions have initiated. DeJoy, a major Trump donor who was appointed in June, has been blamed for slowing down services to lend integrity to the President Donald Trump's claim that mail-in voting, which could cost him the ruling of the White House in November, cannot be relied on.
Thousands of chicks sent through the Postal Service's processing center in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts were also dead on arrival. This also cost farms New Hampshire thousands of dollars.
According to Pingree on the postmaster, "It's one more of the consequences of this disorganization, this sort of chaos they've created at the post office and nobody thought through when they were thinking of slowing down the mail," reported The British Journal.
The abrupt sluggish delivery service and the arrival of dead chicks have hit home for Maine citizens.
In Henderson's case, the chicks arrived on time but were mishandled and in an initial shipment, 150 of the 800 chicks she ordered were dead on arrival.
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