Someone Stole Hundreds Of Easter-Egg-Laying Chickens

No chicken will naturally lay eggs of the vibrant, neon pinks and greens and blues that are commonly found on plastic Easter eggs. But there are hens known as “Easter eggers,” that will lay eggs in even more lovely pastel shades. These birds are especially valued in the springtime, around Easter, and on one Sonoma, California, farm, a thief found the Easter egger chickens just too much to ignore – and swiped a few hundred of them.

Buddy’s Farm, in northern California, is the victim of an insane and well-organized theft of around 300 of its 550 or so chickens, according to its Facebook page. The farm is used to losing a few birds here and there to coyotes, dogs or raptors, but has never experienced a mass theft like this before. “What we didn’t account for was a person or persons coming into our pasture in the cover of night to steal a few hundred birds all at once, right out of the coop as they slept,” reads a message posted on the farm’s Facebook page. “This person knew what they were after, too. Mostly our blue, green and chocolate egg layers were taken, which we incubated and raised ourselves.”

Easter eggers aren’t any one particular breed; Buddy’s own chickens are a variety of heirloom breeds crossbred with more typical domestic breeds. The label only refers to their tendency to lay unusually-colored eggs.

Buddy’s estimates that the dollar value of the theft is somewhere around $30,000, not including the $120 or so per day the farm is losing by not being able to sell the eggs the chickens produce. They’re offering $250 for information leading “to the return of our birds or the prosecution of the rustlers.” Rustlers! Nice. I mean, not nice. Bad rustlers. For contact info, head over to the farm’s Facebook page.

Via Inside Scoop SF, image via Flickr user Observing Life

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