Brooklyn Trucks, Hundreds Of Dead Birds – Why?

U-Haul moving truck driving on a road — Photo: Matt Gush / Shutterstock

Hundreds of chickens were found crammed into abandoned U-Haul trucks in Brooklyn last week, many already dead, in a scene police and activists say points to one of the city’s most disputed religious rituals.

Quick Take

Activists rescued 83 chickens from an abandoned U-Haul in Flatbush, Brooklyn, on Friday night; many were dead or dying.
The New York Police Department (NYPD) confirmed the discovery and said survivors were taken to an undisclosed sanctuary.
Reports say an initial batch of roughly 200 birds included only about 80 still alive.
The birds are believed to have been headed for Kaporos, a pre-Yom Kippur ritual practiced by some Orthodox Jewish communities.
Courts have repeatedly declined to force the city to crack down on the practice despite years of similar complaints.

What Investigators And Activists Found

The New York Police Department said the discovery happened around 8:30 p.m. Friday in Flatbush. Officers and animal rights activists found dozens of chickens packed into an abandoned U-Haul truck. A department spokesperson told Gothamist the chickens “were removed to an undisclosed sanctuary” after the rescue.

Activists Describe Disturbing Scene

Activist John Di Leonardo said the birds were suffering when rescuers arrived. “Birds were in horrible conditions,” he said. “Flies all around them. They were all dehydrated, very, very weak. Many of them were dead”. Separate reporting put the total number of abandoned chickens at close to 200, with only about 80 found still alive.

A spokesperson for the Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos, a group that has fought the ritual in court for over a decade, said the birds were “crammed into crates, with 10 to 18 birds per crate, stacked” on top of each other. She called the treatment “hard to believe” in modern times, adding it “disturbs me deeply due to its sheer cruelty”.

A Ritual With A Long Legal History

Kaporos involves swinging a live chicken overhead while reciting a prayer, a practice some Orthodox Jewish communities carry out before Yom Kippur. Animal rights groups have sued for years, arguing it causes needless suffering and creates public health risks from overcrowded, unsanitary crates left on Brooklyn streets.

New York courts have consistently sided against forcing a crackdown. In 2015, a judge allowed the ritual to continue. Appellate courts upheld that decision in 2017, and the New York Court of Appeals rejected a final challenge in 2018, ruling that police and health officials have discretion over whether to enforce animal cruelty and health laws in this context.

Not An Isolated Incident

This is not the first time dead chickens have surfaced on New York City streets around this time of year. In September 2025, a pair of dead chickens turned up on the same Upper West Side block for the second time in four months, an incident experts said may also connect to ritual practices. The pattern suggests these discoveries recur predictably each fall, tied to the ritual’s timing and public visibility.

•Hundreds of dead chickens were found crammed in crates inside two abandoned U-Haul trucks in Brooklyn, discovered Friday afternoon with only a few still alive after days of neglect.
•The chickens are believed linked to Kapparot, a pre-Yom Kippur atonement ritual practiced by… https://t.co/DQu0F9Xxzh

— B Wruble (@WrubleB) September 20, 2026

The abandoned trucks in Brooklyn add a new and more visible chapter to a long-running conflict between religious freedom claims and animal welfare concerns. For years, courts have avoided ruling on whether Kaporos itself is cruel, focusing instead on whether the city has a legal duty to intervene. That legal gap has left enforcement almost entirely up to police discretion, even as complaints about dead and dying birds keep resurfacing on Brooklyn streets each autumn.

For now, the surviving chickens from Friday’s rescue are recovering at a sanctuary whose location has not been made public. No further details on any investigation into who abandoned the trucks have been released by police.