PASSIONATE animal lover Jean Gill is working hard to prove there is life for hens after battery farms.

Jean, 60, from Great Totham, is so upbeat and positive, she even has a good word or two for the farmers. They’re not, she insists, all bad eggs.

Over the past five or six years, Jean, Essex co-ordinator of the Battery Hen Welfare Trust, has found new homes for thousands of chickens when they have come to the end of what battery farms consider to be their productive lives.

Working closely with farmers and the egg industry, she co-ordinates a team of volunteers around the country which helps her rescue the birds.

As chickens get older, they lay fewer eggs, and at some point, farmers have to decide to send them for slaughter.

This is where Jean and her organisation steps in.

She’ll get a call and head for a farm, where she will collect as many chickens as she can and take them back to her base in Totham.

She plans rescues carefully, considering factors such as transport, the distances invol-ved and the time of year – in summer, hens can easily die if they overheat in a vehicle.

Once back in Totham with Jean, the birds are cared for until they can be re-homed.

Jean said: “We check each bird to make sure nothing’s broken. Sometimes they’re not in very good health, but it can range from not good to very good. Some come out of battery farms and look like ordinary chickens.

“Their natural behaviour comes back almost immediately. We nourish them and nurture the little mites and within no time – eight to 12 weeks – they strengthen up again.”

Once ‘the girls’ – Jean’s favourite way of referring to her hens – are strong enough, people start to turn up and take them home.

She asks for a donation per bird and also makes sure those collecting hens have proper facilities to transport them before they leave.

She regularly goes into schools to give talks and strongly believes the National Curriculum needs changing, so children are more aware of where their food comes from.

In fact, Jean is keen to change the way we all think about food – and to dispel common misconceptions about battery farms.

She explained: “I don’t condemn the farmers.

“They’re just part of the system.

“The bad guys are the supermarkets. They set impossible targets and the uniformity they’re looking for is ridiculous.

“We rescue the hens from the slaughter, not the farmers.

“Battery farms are not great places, but they never claimed to be.

“In their defence, after the Second World War, farmers were encouraged by the Government to mass produce food. Animal welfare was not of paramount importance then.

“Farmers work within the law. If we didn’t buy battery eggs, there would be no market, so we can’t blame them for producing something the customer wants.”

Jean is a vegetarian, but eats eggs – though only free-range ones, of course. She encourages others to do the same, while trying hard not to be preachy about it.

She explained: “I would just say, think about it. If it doesn’t say on the box a product is made with free-range eggs, you need to assume it’s made with battery eggs. Just ask – it’s worth doing it it for my girls.”