The carcasses were found after a person walking her dog heard the cries of distressed birds and called the police just before midnight on Wednesday.Honorary officers said they found around 250 birds trapped in a trailer without food or water.Grouville Centenier Paul Godel said: ‘One of the Constable’s Officers pulled back the tarpaulin covering the trailer and the heat hit her immediately.’The chickens were sweating and suffocating.
They were four or five deep in that trailer and the live ones were running around over the dead ones, which were on the bottom.Centenier Godel said that he and other officers had rushed down to the area when reports of the disturbance at the Happy Hens Ellangowan Farm came in.’After the vandals broke in in April and ripped the heads off several chickens, we moved very quickly,’ he said.Owner of Happy Hens Bob Milner said that it was common practice to move hens from field to field with them shut in their purpose-built houses.
However, he added: ‘One of my staff, who has done this many times over the past 15 months, instead put the hens into a trailer and took them to the new field.’This was done without my knowledge as I expected him simply to go and shut the hens in at nightfall as we usually do.
Why he did this is not 100 per cent clear.’He added: ‘The police are fairly certain that this was an accident and he did not do it deliberately.’This is particularly distressing because we pride ourselves in our humane treatment of the hens and the quality of life they enjoy.’
