rehoming roundup

The above is a tiny snapshot of our hen figures. Behind these numbers lay the hens dependent on us – and more importantly YOU – for their lives. I hope you feel a warm and cosy glow inside knowing you have helped us to help them, whether directly by adopting, or indirectly by supporting us in other ways.

Below is just one of these fabulous teams, BHWT Team Bristol, who has been helping hens since 2011 resulting in 17,826 hens (and still counting) going off to retirement as family pets. Left to right are the following kind-hearted, hen loving volunteers and their length of service to hens :

• Miles 2 years • Anna 6 years • Helen Team Bristol Coordinator 10 years • Lhosa 3 years • Louise 6 years

From me and my fabulous team at Hen Central to all you fabulous volunteers across the country – THANK YOU!

Michelle & Ellie Boulton have been dedicated volunteers since 2008 and here’s their story :

Little did Michelle Ward know that when her daughter, Ellie, gave her the gift of a BHWT sponsored hen called Chirps that it would awake in Michellle an interest that would lead to a 16 year commitment as a volunteer. In December that same year Michelle went on her first hen collection and soon became the Cornwall coordinator. And Ellie was right there with her, from the start.

Michelle recalls one occasion : “Me and my wonderful team at the time took out 1,200 in one depopulation, keeping them all in my stable and then we did the same a few years later at another farm – you just wanted to help.”

When Michelle moved to Lincolnshire, she took all her chickens with her but missed the camaraderie of being in a team with a common purpose, and she missed that warm and cosy glow that comes with saving lives. When she was then diagnosed with cancer life didn’t improve.

Michelle told us: “The treatment for the cancer knocked me sideways, I was tired, felt sick and then when lost my hair; I just didn’t want to go out. Luckily, I am now in complete remission so can carry on helping the hens with my local team in Lincoln.”

Michelle and Ellie have helped more than 20,000 hens during the time they have volunteered, and I think that’s awesome for a mother / daughter achievement. HUGE hugs and thanks to them!

It would be impossible to include every volunteer in these pages - there are 1,400 kind people who help our hens - so I’m just able to shine a light on a few - some of whom I have had the great pleasure to meet.

Jean Gill has been with the charity since June 2005 and as well as helping to rehome more than 49,000 hens, she has also appeared on our behalf with the late Paul O’Grady on his teatime show, and broadcast a Channel 4 news slot too. During it all Jean has kept her team in Essex happy, committed and catered for with her wonderful blend of compassion and humour.

Jean, featured right, wanted to put a few words together about what the charity means to her :

My initial association with the BHWT was, as is so much in life, completely random. A general enquiry about hen keeping ended with my casual offer of ‘anything I can do to help’, intended more as a matter of good manners than a genuine desire to get involved. Too late. I was in.

The practicalities of the initial rescues were probably why our small but earnest group of volunteers bonded so quickly and so completely, to the point where people who were initially colleagues are now life-long friends. The challenging nature of emptying a battery farm meant that there was no time for niceties : it was all hard work and focus but there was an inexpressible satisfaction from driving away, exhausted but triumphant, munching homemade sandwiches clasped in grubby hands, often shared with the hens that we weren’t able to fit into the crates settled on our laps.

However, 19 years on, the operation is now infinitely more streamlined. Hens are mostly delivered to our door by volunteer drivers and paperwork is computerised, none of which in any way detracts from the deep satisfaction we get from a job well done. The charity is a perfect product of its time, having initially identified and facilitated a trend for people to be more aware both of the provenance of their food and the way it's produced and maybe, in this high speed, press button, digital age, hen keeping somehow harks back to a gentler era when the pace of life was less pressured.

Over the years numerous attempts were made to drag the poultry industry out of the dark ages. They made little or no difference. The charity’s approach was completely different. Rather than challenging the industry, the approach was co-operative whereby farmers were befriended and encouraged to consider a different, more humane kind of husbandry whilst still appreciating the need for it to be financially viable. Instead of working against the industry, our founder engineered a joint venture and, in doing so, improved hen welfare beyond all recognition. Plus, encouraging people to adopt spent hens has improved the status of hens above just being an egg laying machine.

The operation many be slicker but the sentiments run every bit as deep. The charity has rightly gone from strength and, in doing so, has changed every aspect of poultry keeping for the better.