Thousands of chicks were abandoned in a postal truck for three days, now an animal shelter in Delaware is trying to care for those that survived their ordeal.

The U.S. Postal Service is investigating how 12,000 chicks were left inside a tractor-trailer at a Delaware mail distribution center. The truck was warm and the animals did not have food or water for three days, The Associated Press reported.

WBOC said the chicks were left stranded after shipping delays and distribution center rejections. They were intended to be sent to Texas, Ohio, Florida and other states, but were mistakenly sent to Delaware, the station reported.

Up to 2,000 were supposed to go to Spokane, Washington, Delaware state officials said in a news release.

They were packed in about 300 cardboard crates.

Thousands of the chicks died, but more than two thousand survived.

The chicks were turkeys, geese and quail but most were chickens.

Freedom Ranger Hatchery, which is based in Pennsylvania, raised the chicks as part of its weekly distribution of the animals across the country, but because of biosecurity concerns, the hatchery cannot take them back.

A company spokesperson said it would have been better if the USPS had been delivered to those who had ordered them, since the recipients would have been able to handle the birds.

Instead, they were sent to First State Animal Center and SPCA and have been there for about two weeks, the shelter’s executive director, John Parana, said.

The Delaware Department of Agriculture directed the chicks to be sent to the shelter after receiving a call from the USPS. The caller said there was “an undeliverable box of baby birds,” The New York Times reported. State officials said the USPS indicated multiple boxes.

The two agencies have a memorandum of understanding where the Agriculture Department pays the shelter $5 a day for each chicken. Parana, however, said that the department has told the shelter that it has no money allocated to the chicks. Parana also said the $5 per chick a day is also not enough.

They had to add staffing to deal with the 24/7 care the chicks needed, and some employees are spending their own money to support the animals, since the shelter is a nonprofit and relies on donations, the AP reported.

The shelter has offered the chicks for adoption, but only a few hundred have been taken. There are still an estimated two thousand left. The number there is an estimate because the shelter is not able to get an accurate count, Parana told the AP. Some people had asked to adopt the birds to raise them for meat, but the shelter is a no-kill shelter so officials declined those adoptions.

The USPS has been shipping chicks in the mail for more than a century, but only during the spring and summer.

“Chicks can be safely transported without food or water within 72 hours of hatching,” the USPS said, adding that, “Thousands of chicks are transported through the U.S. Mail seamlessly every year. This is a legacy operation we take very seriously as lives are literally at stake.”

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