Signed up with Battery Hen Welfare Trust to rescue and home some battery chickens over the weekend. We have always kept chickens but until now we always got the rarer breeds, Aracunas, Lakenvelders, Appenzellers to name but a few.

Until this weekend and a chance remark we thought the trust only operated in the south of England -- how wrong we were. The rescue is alive kicking and doing much good work in the north as well. 

It was always our intention to give a good home to some battery chickens and now we can. Happy days for the chickens and us. Nice thing is that our existing flock will be able to show them how to live as a real bird, not like the wretched caged scrawny existence they had before.

We hope to get our first rescues sometime mid January. In the mean time if you eat eggs, and have a little spare ground please do consider joining us and rescue some hens yourself. All the information can be found here. 

No need to worry about noisy cockerels as only the hens lay eggs and so only the hens are placed into the battery system in the first place.

Cost is minimal too, and more than offset by the eggs these ladies will produce for you. Allow them to truly free range and there is simply no way to compare the taste and quality of the eggs you will get with those bought from a shop — even those that are sold as free range are nothing like as good as the real thing.