Chickens and other small animals are shipped from hatcheries and breeders through the U.S. Postal Service by ground delivery and airmail all the time. See, for example, Murray McMurray Hatchery.
Newborn chicks die "quietly" in postal service deliveries, and often a box of chicks will sit in a local Post Office and never be picked up by the buyer. Many self-styled small farms get their "local" chicks entirely through the mail and lobby Congress vigorously to support this practice. Male chicks the hatchery industry calls "packers" are frequently stuffed as packing material in boxes of baby hens.
Shipment of live birds and other animals through the Postal Service is one of the many hidden cruelties inflicted on animals. School-hatching projects, 4-H, cockfighters, hunting-dog trainers, backyard chicken-keepers, "free-range" farmers and other interests view the postal service, in the words of one farmer, as the "very lifeblood" of their business.
Airmailing baby chicks from factory-farm hatcheries to buyers is cheap, since the birds are shipped like luggage, with no weather protection or other comforts afforded to people's pets when in transit.
We the undersigned ask that this practice be stopped in order to reduce needless suffering.
