Animal welfare officers have faced the grisly task of euthanising more than 350,000 chickens by hand after they were left starving and cannibalising each other.

This happened when a South African state-owned poultry company ran out of money to feed them, officials said on Tuesday.

The National Council of Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, or NSPCA, said it was not able to say for certain how many other chickens had already died by the time.

Its officers reached several neglected poultry farming sites because of the “mass cannibalism” that took place among the birds.

The NSPCA had managed to save more than 500,000 chickens, it said.

“It was a harrowing scene,” the NSPCA said in a statement.

It added, “Skeletal chickens huddled together, chickens eating one another, feeding lines stripped bare.”

The chickens were owned by Daybreak Foods, a major poultry supplier owned by South Africa’s state asset management company, Public Investment Corp.

NSPCA officers were first alerted to a crisis at one farm on April 30.

The organisation uncovered at least five other farms in northern South Africa, with multiple sites on each farm where birds had been left to starve.

(AP/NAN)