When a homeowner noticed what looked like a pile of packages along their driveway, they were confused. They didn’t remember ordering anything, and the packages seemed to be dumped haphazardly.
They went to get a closer look and discovered boxes and bags of chicken feed scattered about. The homeowner took a look inside — and was absolutely shocked by what they found.
12 chickens were huddled inside three different sealed cardboard boxes. It looked like it was possible someone had placed an order for the chickens and the delivery had gone very wrong. “It was a really odd discovery as it doesn’t look like these birds were abandoned —
I suspect they were being delivered to someone, but we don’t know for sure,” Ollie Wilkes, an animal rescue officer with the RSPCA, said in a press release.
The homeowner contacted the RSPCA for help, and Wilkes arrived to take the chickens to safety. He transported them to the RSPCA Doncaster, Rotherham and District Branch’s South Yorkshire Animal Centre at Bawtry, where they were all checked over, and luckily they seemed to be healthy.
“It does look like a delivery that has gone wrong for whatever reason, but we couldn’t trace it back as there was no documentation in the boxes,” Wilkes said. “It’s a real mystery, but fortunately, the chickens were only on the driveway for a short amount of time and they are doing fine.
It was a good outcome for all of them, and as soon as I got them to Bawtry, they made themselves at home in the centre’s chicken coops.”
Wilkes put up posters in the neighborhood to see if anyone could shed some light on the mystery, but so far no one has. Security camera footage shows a van dropping the chickens off, but no other details are known.
Despite the mysterious circumstances, the chickens are all doing well, and four of them have already been adopted. The remaining eight are currently up for adoption and will hopefully find their forever homes very soon.