Chooks poached from St James Primary School

BRAZEN thieves targeted a Ballarat school, hair salon, trout farm, bakery and a garden store at the weekend, in five separate incidents that cost business owners thousands of dollars in lost goods and equipment.

Six chickens were taken from St James’ Parish Primary School in Sebastopol on Saturday, upsetting pupils on their first day back after the holidays.

Deputy principal Peter Fahey said it was the second time thieves had targeted the school in the past 12 months.

Late last year six other chickens were taken from the school and never recovered.

After that incident, pupils installed a lock, sensor lights and heavy wire on the chicken coop, in an effort to deter thieves.

Grade five pupil Ella Kendall said her classmates were finding it hard to deal with losing the chickens for a second time.

“It’s pretty upsetting because we’ve taken all of these precautions and the chickens were almost ready to lay eggs,” she said.

Ballarat Garden Supplies owner Brendan Lovell said thieves made off with more than $5000 in tools and equipment from his business.

He said they also “went through” two offices at the Mount Clear site.

“It’s pretty hard to recover from something like this – it is a massive set-back,” he said.

Staff arrived at the Alfredton Bakery yesterday to find the building ransacked.

Thieves broke through two locked doors to steal a set of knives, an audio system and to ransack the building, casing a major headache for the owners.

A Mount Clear hairdressing salon was also hit, with thieves breaking in about 3.30am yesterday.

Upper Cutz Hair Studio owner Emily Tripp said the back door was forced open before thieves helped themselves to more than $1000 in cash and equipment.

“They’re pigdogs – I’d like to get my hands on them,” she said.

Ballarat Trout Hatchery president Dennis Ventley said his organisation’s Lake Wendouree office was trashed during the weekend break-in.

“Any break-in is always a set-back,” he said.

“We’ve been rolled quite a number of times actually – at least they didn’t take too much this time. We’re a volunteer organisation, all run by volunteers so something like this really hurts,” he said.

Ballarat Police Sergeant Jo Graham said police did not have reason to believe the thefts were linked.