Mail and parcel delivery could be halted if there is another Canada Post strike, but did you know it could also affect an unusual service the postal carrier has provided for many years? Johnny Aantjes was among a handful of people picking up chicks at Kelowna International Airport on Thursday morning. He owns The Feedway, a pet and livestock feed business based in Penticton. The Feedway also sells farm-fresh eggs, baby chicks and chickens. He drove from Penticton to the WestJet Cargo depot to take delivery of a shipment of 1,400 live baby chickens. “Normally we transport them through Canada Post but with a potential strike, we don’t want these little guys being stuck in a van somewhere if they get shut down, so we put them on a plane and flew them in,” said Aantjes. While Canada Post said that any live animal deliveries in the system would be delivered in the event of a strike, Aantjes didn’t want to risk the birds being left in limbo, especially in light of a troubling case out of Delaware recently. “Where 12,000 birds were stuck in the back of a van. I don’t think it was a strike situation, but somehow they were forgotten and then lost 10,000 of 12,000 birds. “We just can’t have that happen, so the flight made the most sense,” he said. The other option was to truck them from the supplier in Alberta, but that would take longer and possibly put the birds under more stress than a quick flight. The fuzzy little chicks were loaded into the back of Aantjes’ SUV and made it safely to the South Okanagan, where they were quickly made comfortable under heat lamps. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers was poised to begin job action as early as Friday if the two sides had not come to a settlement before the midnight deadline.