A $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone stealing copper wire from poultry houses is being offered announced Bev Saunders, manager of Poultry Partners, Inc. “This would include anyone in Missouri, Arkansas or Oklahoma, “ Saunders said. “I do have commitments for more than one reward – we’ll just have to use this first come first to get it until we run out of money,” Saunders added. “The important thing is we get these thieves caught and stopped. This has been devastating to many poultry producers.”

The theft of the wiring on poultry farms creates a much larger loss the farmer than just the wire. In most of these cases, not only are the farmer out the deductible of the insurance claim, which generally is about $2,500 and that’s if the policy covers the incident, the farmer is also out time lost while getting the houses repaired for another flock. This downtime has been about three plus weeks. It causes problems for the company – if they have birds scheduled to go back into the houses and nowhere else they can go with the baby birds.  It’s a much bigger problem than just the cost of the wire and repairing the houses, although that in itself is a huge problem.

“For the farmers that have been hit by these thieves, it is estimated to cost them about $10,000 each. This is a terrible financial blow to a group of folks that work on such a slim margin anyway,” Saunders said.

Anyone who has information about these crimes is asked to contact their local sheriff’s department. For more information about the rewards, Saunders can be contacted at 918-422-4030.  Sheriff departments in Benton and Washington County Arkansas, Delaware County Oklahoma and McDonald County Missouri have been contacted about the reward offer.