Law enforcement officials and animal welfare advocates discovered hundreds of chickens abandoned in Brooklyn on Friday, raising concerns about the animals' welfare and their connection to a religious ritual observed by some members of the Orthodox Jewish community. Authorities found the first group of approximately 200 birds, many of them deceased or in poor condition, inside an abandoned U-Haul parked on Winthrop Avenue. Shortly thereafter, a second U-Haul containing additional chickens was located roughly a mile and a half away.

According to activists and police, only about 80 of the initial 200 chickens were still alive when found. Rina Deych, founder of the Alliance to End Chickens as Kaporos, described the situation as "excruciatingly cruel" and expressed surprise that the practice persists. Kaporos is a pre-Yom Kippur ritual performed by a small portion of the Orthodox Jewish population, involving the ceremonial swinging of a live chick over the participant’s head, followed by the bird's subsequent slaughter.

Deych, who identifies as Jewish, explained that during the ritual, a person waves a chicken—typically a young chick—above their head by the wings before the animal is killed by having its throat cut. The discovery of the abandoned chickens has prompted calls from animal rights groups for the practice to be reconsidered or halted due to concerns over animal suffering. Law enforcement and animal welfare organizations are currently investigating the circumstances surrounding the abandonment and the condition of the recovered birds.