Over 700 chickens scared to death by adult owl

Recently, over 700 chickens died in shock and stampede, when an adult owl broke into a chicken farm in a village in Fuling District of China’s central Chongqing region.When there came a burst of abnormal noise from the chicken farm in the early morning, Mr. Qing, who raised over 6000 chickens in the farm, thought it was the lowly chicken thief stealing chickens. But he was totally stunned, when he arrived to see a horrifying adult owl and a large batch of dead chickens on the ground.

The owl stands 43cm tall, and weighs 4kg. It was enjoying its meal when caught by Mr. Qing to a coop. Since the owl is the State protected species, Mr. Qing had to tolerate and hand it over to the local forest administration station.According to staff members of the local forest administration station, the chickens apparently stampeded over each other when scared by the intruder. In the same time, the owl flapped its wings to its preys, resulting in death of these healthy chickens from suffocation finally.Owls primarily feed on rats, mice and rabbits, and they sometimes eat insects, fish and birds too. Due to the cold and rainy weather in past few days, the owl experienced food shortage as less rats and mice were found coming outdoors. Thus it broke into the chicken farm to search food.However, only a few chickens were bitten by the owl. Most of them were scared to death.