Story originally printed in the Winona Daily News or online at www.winonadailynews.com

Published - Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Why did these chicks get left by the road?

By Amber Dulek / Winona Daily News

One white-crested black Polish chick and 105 fuzzy yellow chicks are recouping at the Winona Area Humane Society after being discarded in a ditch off U.S. Highway 14 Sunday night.

Winona police officers Paul Anderson and Eric Mueller found the flock about 10:15 p.m. in a grassy ditch off U.S. Highway 14 near Saint Mary’s University.

Officer Mueller said they found a couple boxes down in the woods and the nearby flock clustered along a ditch. Two bystanders helped the officers corral the shivering chicks.

A flock of chicks huddles together under a heat lamp Monday at the WInona Area Humane Society. Winona police officers discovered 106 chicks alongside Highway 14 Sunday. The chicks are recovering and will be taken in by Chicken Run Rescue in Minneapolis. (Photo by Melissa Carlo/Winona Daily News)

“They were standing there looking at you all soaked and peeping at you,” Mueller said. “It’s just tragic. It’s cold. It’s raining and these little chicks are so susceptible to temperature. I don’t know why anyone would want to throw them out.”

One chick died. Some lost toes. Others’ combs were badly scraped.

Police took the flock to the Winona Area Humane Society, where volunteers worked late into the night to create make-shift incubators using heat lamps, heat pads and kiddy pools. Mueller called them “pros.”

Humane Society volunteers made a late-night chicken feed pick-up at Kupietz Feed and Sales. They dipped the chicks’ beaks in sugar water to teach them how to drink in the necessary electrolytes. They put salve on the chicks’ wounds.

“We got them settled within an hour, and we watched them for the next hour,” said longtime volunteer Tracy Morgan, who used to have two pet chickens.

Winona Area Humane Society Vice President Deborah Stowe stayed all night to make sure the chicks survived the night. After the trauma the chicks endured, Stowe said the next few days will determine if they live.

One scruffy fellow wasn’t expected to make it overnight. It pulled through with enough spunk left to keep up with the rest of the furry flock chirping, clucking and pecking at feed under heat lamps Monday afternoon.

“They got banged up,” Stowe said. “We haven’t lost one yet, knock on wood.”

The chicks, about 10 days old, have different colored bands with numbers around their legs. Officer Mueller believed the chicks were tossed out intentionally, because they weren’t found in the middle of the road and no one called to say they were missing chicks.

Mueller estimated the chicks had been outside about a half hour.

“They’re little baby chicks. C’mon. Their best hope was they were going to freeze to death or get picked off by raccoons,” Mueller said. “They’re living creatures, and they’re entitled to the same dignity that any creature gets.”

Mary Britton Clouse, founder of Minneapolis chicken rescue organization called Chicken Run Rescue, said

little humanity goes into the treatment of chickens.

“These little guys really fall through the cracks,” she said. “They’re exempt from humane slaughter laws and animal cruelty laws.”

Chicken Run Rescue, which has taken nearly 300 birds since 2001, hopes to find homes for the 106 abandoned chicks.

“We want them to go to a home and not someone’s dinner table,” Stowe said. “We figured if they escaped death once they deserve a second chance.”

Clouse sent an e-mail adoption announcement to a network list of 180 people in the seven-county metro area. Interested adopters must fill out an application found on the nonprofit’s Web site at www.brittonclouse.com/

chickenrunrescue/.

Chickens make excellent companions and can live for about 15 years, unless they’re bred for things such as reaching market weight in six weeks, Clouse said.

There’s a boom in having backyard flocks, but Clouse said their long life expectancy requires a committed adopter.

“They’re bright and smart and funny and fascinating and beautiful — all the good things that make life worth living,” Clouse said.

Contact reporter Amber Dulek at amber.dulek@lee.net or (507) 453-3513.