Most of the 312 young chickens stolen from a South Australian school have been found dead, apparently from suffocation.
Thieves cut their way into a shed at Nurioopta High School, in the Barossa Valley, sometime between Sunday evening and Monday morning.
The two-week-old laying hens were part of the school's agricultural study program.
But police say that the chicks were found on Monday night, abandoned under a tree along a fence line near the school.
Forty-six were alive, but 266 had died.
Teacher Gerald Wright told the ABC he thought they had suffocated.
The culprits must have put them in too small a container or put them several chickens too deep in a container, which meant the majority of them appeared to have been smothered, he said.
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