FILLMORE : 2,500 Chickens Were Killed in Truck Accident

About 2,500 chicken carcasses were piled in a ravine near Grimes Canyon Road outside Fillmore on Wednesday following a truck accident that dumped 4,000 chickens from the vehicle’s rear trailer.

Animal regulation officers spent Tuesday night in Grimes Canyon freeing the trapped birds from wire cages and sorting the live ones from the dead, said Jeff Hoffman, a senior officer with the Ventura County Humane Society. The workers lit a fire to keep marauding coyotes at bay, and a county veterinarian euthanized about 1,000 injured birds.

The society is investigating the cause of the accident, which occurred at 6:30 p.m. Monday, Hoffman said.

“We’ve got quite a bit of questioning to do,” Hoffman said. “It could have been a complete accident. If not, somebody’s going to pay.”

The birds were part of a load of 8,000 former laying hens purchased from Egg City in Moorpark for slaughter by a Northern California processing plant, authorities said. After one trailer loaded with chickens broke loose from the truck Monday, the driver for Coelho Trucking of Turlock apparently continued to his destination.

Rescue efforts did not begin until Tuesday because local animal regulation authorities were not notified, Hoffman said. “Even Egg City didn’t know until late Tuesday,” he said.

Although Egg City officials were not responsible for the birds once they left Moorpark, Hoffman said, “they’ve been tremendously cooperative. Without their help, we could have been here for days.”

By late Wednesday, most of the live chickens had been loaded onto another Coelho truck for the drive north and workers were loading the dead birds onto another vehicle for disposal. Hoffman said the company was responsible for disposing of the carcasses.