Dog attack kills 29 exhibit animals at a Florida middle school

LAKE WALES, Fla. (WFLA) – When Jennifer Williams arrived at school Thursday morning, it wasn’t a pretty sight.

“It was like a massacre. There were just dead rabbits everywhere, dead chickens everywhere. It was unreal,” she said.

Williams is an agriculture teacher and FFA advisor at Bok Academy North in Lake Wales.

On Thursday morning, three dogs dug a hole under a fence and got into an area called the “Land Lab” at the school. Here, students and staff house dozens of exhibit animals, including rabbits, chickens, ducks, turkeys, goats, pigs and cattle.

The FFA students help breed and raise the animals and then show them at youth fairs.

“Many of the children are not around animals because they come from the city. They bond better with the chickens and rabbits because they are smaller,” Williams said.

The dogs managed to rip open the rabbit cages and get into the chicken coop.

A keeper managed to scare the dogs away as they tried to enter a duck enclosure.

A total of 29 rabbits and chickens were killed.

Two rabbits remained safe in a wooden enclosure.

“It was terrible. I had come out to feed the calf and Mrs Williams wouldn’t let me near that area. She just let me stay over there. She was like, ‘You don’t want to be here, go in’ said Riley Grogan, eighth grader and FFA officer.

“I have never seen dogs randomly attack a chicken in the middle of school. There’s a fence and everything. I thought it would stop them, but obviously it didn’t,” said Zibe Stein, eighth-grader and Bok Academy North FFA president.

According to the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, the dogs were mixed breed dogs. One is male and two are female.

They belong to two next-door neighbors who were both charged for letting their dogs roam illegally.

Polk County Animal Control spotted the dogs lying at an intersection but lost sight of them in the area of ​​Harding Avenue.

They had not been found as of Friday afternoon.

Meanwhile, students and staff at Bok Academy North are trying to recover from the incident as their hopes of a successful youth fair season next year are likely to be dashed.

“At the various trade fairs there are rules regarding age limits for animals. They must therefore have reached a certain age before they can be issued. All the chickens we get now that are new, they wouldn’t be able to show because they wouldn’t be old enough yet. We’re going to have a lot of kids who can’t show poultry because they’ve all been killed,” Williams said.

Most of the surviving animals will be housed off-site while the school works to improve safety measures.

Williams said the school is accepting donations for new, sturdier fences and residential fencing.

Anyone interested in getting involved can contact Williams at the school at (863) 232-4665.