Developmentally disabled adults were heartbroken this month when 25 chickens they had lovingly hatched and raised were stolen from the Marysville adult day care center in which they were being reared.

This is reportedly the third time thieves have snatched the hens from the Farm 2 Fork non-profit.

 

“They were our babies,” Sheila Baggett told local CBS News affiliate KPIX in San Francisco. Raising those chicks is a daily job for the 27 disabled adults who attend the program.

It’s “really taught them a sense of accomplishment, and it’s really broadened their horizons of learning how to take care of something, because many of them don’t have the opportunity to care for another being, let alone an animal,” Van Buskirk also told KPIX.

The thieves had targeted the non-profit center twice before, each time taking more of the hens. This third time, they cleaned out the coop.

Farm 2 Fork is offering a $100 award for each of the 25 hens upon their safe return.

An image of a message posted on the nonprofit’s Facebook page alongside the $100 reward offer reads, “Bad people who steal disabled clients chickens… YOU SUCK! They miss their friends.”

Farm 2 Fork also posted a photo of some of the adults from the center smiling with one of the now-stolen chickens.

Photo: FIle

Follow Adelle Nazarian on Twitter @AdelleNaz