A gang of chickens at a French farming school this week are suspected of having killed a fox that had sneaked into their coop in the middle of the night, school officials believe.

According to reports, the fox had entered a coop containing 3,000 hens. After the fox had entered, an automatic hatch door reportedly closed, trapping the animal inside.

Pascal Daniel, head of the farming school Le Gros-Chene, told the AFP news agency that a “herd instinct” kicked in and the chickens “attacked him with their beaks.”

The body of the fox, believed to be five or six months old, was found by students the following day with “blows to its neck, blows from beaks,” Daniel said.

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“A whole mass of hens can arrive together and the fox may have panicked in the face of such a big number,” Daniel told the local outlet “Ouest France,” in his native tongue. “They can be quite tenacious when they are in a pack.”

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The farming is located in Brittany, a remote region in northwestern France. The farm houses 6,000 chickens who roam freely on a five-acre site, BBC reported.