A man wandering around a Delmar, Md., poultry farm in a drunken stupor turned off the power to three chicken houses, causing the deaths of nearly 70,000 chickens, sheriff’s officials said.

The property owner who made the grisly discovery found the man, identified as Joshua D. Shelton, 21, of Delmar, Md., passed out on the floor of the power control shed, wearing only a T-shirt and boxer shorts.

“This subject was also lying in a pool of his own urine. A strong odor of alcohol was also coming from the subject,” Wicomico County sheriff’s Lt. Tim Robinson said in a press release.

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The investigating deputy awakened the man.

“Shelton advised the last thing he remembered was being on the property after a nearby concert but did not know how he ended up in the shed. The deputy surmised that in his intoxicated state, Shelton turned off the circuit breakers that controlled the electricity to the chicken houses,” Robinson said.

Shelton was arrested and booked into jail on charges of second-degree burglary, trespass and malicious destruction of property.

The property owner discovered the dead chickens Saturday morning. He told investigators that without power, the chickens will begin to die within 15 minutes. The birds, which were due to be delivered to a local processing plant the following day, were valued at $20,000.

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Allen Farms, which was going to process the birds, estimated its loss at $220,000, said sheriff's Chief Deputy Gary Baker.

Shelton had been at the owner's property the previous evening with a group of people that included the owner’s daughter, Baker said.

“The daughter thought he left, but instead he wandered into the shed where all the power controls and breakers were and turned it off,” Baker told NBC News on Tuesday.

"Quite frankly, he was probably in a condition where he really didn’t know what he was doing,” Baker said.

"The theory is that he may have been in there looking for a light switch," Robinson told DelmarvaNow.com.

Baker said he’s heard of flocks of chickens dying due to natural occurrences such as drought and heat waves, "but never anything like this manmade that we can remember.”

Bill Satterfield, executive director of Delmarva Poultry Industry Inc., a local trade group, said he was surprised by news of the poultry caper.

"I have never heard of a drunkard going in and killing chickens," he told DelmarvaNow.com. "This is a new one on me, and it's unfortunate that it occurred."

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A Kansas artist says she’ll change her plan to publicly slaughter chickens as part of an art installation after city officials told her the plan would violate local ordinances and could result in a $1,000 fine.

Lawrence city officials said that Amber Hansen’s project, “The Story of Chickens: A Revolution,” would amount to animal cruelty, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.

Hansen had planned to display chicken coops across the eastern Kansas city with volunteers helping to care for the birds. The exhibit was to end with the birds being killed and served as a meal, the AP reported. Hansen wanted to draw attention to the process of slaughtering animals.

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“If people choose to eat meat, it is an important process to witness and be mindful of,” Hansen told the Lawrence Journal-World. “It is a process that takes place on a mass scale every day, and we aren’t really allowed to see it.”

Assistant City Attorney Chad Sublet told the newspaper that the public slaughter of chickens would be a violation of the city’s animal cruelty code.

“I think one could argue there is a freedom of expression interest here, but I think under our obligations to protect the health, safety and public welfare it is an activity we can regulate,” he told the Lawrence Journal-World.

Hansen told the newspaper on Monday her project will move forward but in a way that complies with city code. Details of what that new installation would include were still being worked out, she said.

An email to Hansen on Tuesday by msnbc.com was not immediately returned.

The original proposal sparked criticism from Lawrence’s Compassion for All Animals Group and United Poultry Concerns, the newspaper reported.

“There has been a lot of feedback,” Hansen told the newspaper. “There has been a lot of meaningful dialogue and discussion and that is good. The project will move forward to accommodate that discussion, but it will abide by the city’s codes.”

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Acting on an anonymous tip, authorities discovered nearly 50,000 abandoned chickens at an egg farm just south of Modesto, Calif. The hens hadn’t been fed for two weeks, the Modesto Bee reported, and nearly all were so sick they had to be euthanized.

The birds’ carcasses were sent to a landfill; about 2,000 surviving hens were sent to sanctuaries where they are being treated and will be adopted out as companions.

A&L Poultry, the owner of the abandoned egg farm, issued an apology by way of Fox40, saying the company was shutting down its egg production.

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The company stated the chickens were abandoned by accident: “An attempt to arrange for delivery of the chickens to a third party in order to avoid the usual business practice of euthanizing the chickens resulted in an unacceptable situation A&L Poultry did not intend, and profoundly regrets.”

Annette Patton, the executive director of Stanislaus Animal Services Agency, told the Modesto Bee that she will ask the Stanislaus County district attorney’s office next week to prosecute the owner of A&L Poultry, Andy Keung Cheung.

A&L Poultry produced between 12.5 million and 15 million eggs a year, which, although a large number, represents a fraction of the egg production industry in that county, the Modesto Bee reported.

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