'Obvious they had been dumped': Vancouver Island woman finds dozens of dead chickens on beach

Warning: This story contains graphic images.

A Comox Valley, B.C., woman is shocked after making a disturbing discovery over the weekend, coming across two dozen dead chickens along a popular shoreline.

"They’re not decomposed or anything and there’s so many, so I thought it was very odd," said Tiffany Mooney on Monday.

"It wasn’t like one or two that had been killed by animals, it was pretty obvious they had been dumped to me," she told CTV News.

Mooney says she didn’t want children or animals to get into the dead poultry, so she tried calling authorities.

"When I did speak to the RCMP there seemed to be some confusion over whose jurisdiction it was, whether it was the police or bylaw or somebody else," she said.

"I haven’t heard back so I did post on Facebook on a couple of different sites," Mooney added.

Some who replied to her posting thought they may have been dumped there in order to feed eagles, something not recommended by staff at Mountainaire Avian Rescue Society (MARS).

"It leads to a lot of different issues. Our main concern is that we don’t really know what was going on with the chickens or how they were killed," said Gylaine Anderson of MARS.

The greatest concern for staff is if the chickens were euthanized with medications.

"We don’t know if they were healthy or if they were diseased, if they were on any medications that could be harmful to whatever eats (them)," them Anderson said.

Staff say it is also illegal to feed dangerous wildlife in B.C.

"Feeding wildlife also habituates them to people and makes them more dependent on people as a food source, and there’s lots of natural food sources for them especially right now with the herring run," said Anderson.

Anderson says anyone wanting to properly get rid of chickens beyond their egg-laying days should post them to social media as pets or contact places that will use them for food, such as MARS.

For now, the carcasses remain on the beach.