Farmer blames balloons for hen deaths

HEREFORD, England, Nov. 6 (UPI) -- A farmer in England's Herefordshire county says low-flying hot-air balloons caused 30 of her hens to die after their eggs exploded inside of them.

Abbi Vincent-Lloyd said the stress of seeing gigantic hot-air balloons over their heads led the hens to run for shelter in a panicked state that caused them to bump into one another and rupture the eggs inside of them, The Daily Telegraph reported Wednesday.

Vincent-Lloyd said post-mortems performed on the hens found they died of peritonitis, an infection caused by their eggs bursting inside their bodies.

"I had lost about 15 birds when I decided to have the vet do a post mortem on two of them," the farmer said. "I told the vet about the hot-air balloons and jets flying low over the farm and straight away he said that was the cause."

"As soon as the gas is released to raise the balloon they go absolutely crazy," she said. "It is absolute chaos, when they go into anything and that causes the egg to explode inside them. The fragments of the egg and its contents then infect them and then they die from it -- it's a horrible way to go."