Battery chickens help kids learn
 Jo Burnard, farm supervisor at Umberslade Farm Park, Tanworth-in-Arden, Warwickshire, with some of the battery chickens she rescued with the help of the charity the Battery Hen Welfare Trust Photo supplied A FARM park in Warwickshire has rescued 30 battery-farm chickens from slaughter so children can get an insight into intensive poultry production.
Animal supervisor at Umberslade Farm Park in Tanworth-in-Arden, Warwickshire, Jo Burnard, came up with the idea after visiting the website of the Battery Hen Welfare Trust.
“This is a wonderful charity that rescues thousands of battery hens a year and finds homes for them to start a new life as free-range birds.
“The hens are all approximately 17 months old, which is the age when battery hens are disposed of by the egg producers because their laying cycle has started to decline. After this age, apparently they stop laying one egg a day and regress to laying five eggs over seven days.
“They are no longer deemed suitable for the production industry but are still perfectly good for laying eggs for a further three years. They are excellent for free range in private gardens – which is what many families are now doing thanks to the work of the Battery Hen Welfare Trust.
“Further batches of battery-reared hens will follow and all this will provide us with an ideal educational opportunity to explain to children about the different ways hens are kept – and the impact this has on the quality of their life.”
Umberslade Farm Park is run by two recent graduates of Harper Adams University College in Shropshire, Oliver Muntz and Matt Porter – having closed in April last year for refurbishment. Over the previous two decades, the farm had become one of the leading rural attractions for children in the West Midlands. The new business has been stimulated by a Rural Enterprise Grant.
Popular activities will include bottle feeding lambs, handling baby chicks, ferret racing, tractor and trailer and pony rides, and crop investigation walks –depending on the time of year. The management has renewed the outdoor play area and installed new indoor activities and a Farmhouse Café.
• More information at: www.bhwt.org.uk >>
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