While Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall campaigns for better (if brief) lives for the chickens who end up on your dinner table, what happens to the scrawny battery birds that lay the eggs for your breakfast? They’re being adopted.

Every year, the Battery Hen Welfare Trust rescues and rehomes thousands of “rescue chickens” as an alternative to slaughter.

The trust, whose patrons include Jamie Oliver, employs 18 rescue co-ordinators across Britain, and has a team of 45 volunteers. It estimates that it has saved and rehomed 91,000 birds since starting as a one-woman enterprise.

Battery hens are caged at around 18-20 weeks old, or as soon as they are ready to lay eggs. Many of the birds rescued by the trust have never seen daylight and some cannot even walk properly.

“The British public are starting to really become aware of the 20m battery hens which have been out of sight, out of mind for decades,” said Jane Howorth, 48, who set up the trust.

“It’s a compassionate thing. People just absolutely love adopting birds which have never enjoyed the sun on their backs and wind in their feathers, and giving them the opportunity to live.

“The industry initially expected us to be extremists but we’ve actually got an excellent relationship with them now. We know the financial pressures they face and we want to find a solution which works for them.”

The trust asks farmers for permission to rescue their birds, which are normally slaughtered after about 52 weeks when they reach the end of their most productive period. A team of volunteers is then dispatched to collect up to 1,000 unwanted hens every week all over the country and hand them to loving homes where they can enjoy “free-range retirement”, often becoming family pets.

“By the end of this month we will have homed 92,000 hens since I started the trust in April 2005,” said Howorth. She had already been a freelance chicken rescuer for a decade before that.

“I rescued my first batch of chickens from a farm in 1995. My first batch was 12 in a cardboard box in the back of the Mini. After that I’d turn up to the slaughter house and grab crates of them, literally minutes from death. The industry were so helpful – they’ve been fantastic.

“After that I really got into it. I was taking around 60 a year. Then in 2003 I lost both my parents to cancer and decided to throw myself into this. I decided to rehome them rather than just keep them all; 90,000 hens later it’s just gone bananas and I couldn’t be happier.”

Anne Prouse, 39, a teacher in Marlborough, Wiltshire, rescued six chickens last year: “You get them home and they have no idea how to peck or roost. Watching them become proper chickens is just the most rewarding thing you’ll ever see. And they are constantly laying. I mean, one of them, bless them, laid an egg in the car on the journey home. They just can’t stop.”

After a few days, says Prouse, as the chickens became healthier, their yolks went from pale yellow to a deep orange and the taste became much richer.

“People get very attached to them.

They’re wonderful pets and very eccentric personalities. I know one person who knitted little jumpers for them for the winter.”

By some estimates, 500,000 households now keep chickens. Many owners are so proud of their flocks that they have taken to organising “hen parties” in which current and prospective owners gather in back gardens to cuddle and talk to chickens and learn about keeping them.

“I’d expect this phenomenon to go global, said Howorth, “because chickens are probably the most underestimated farm animals in the world. It’s a shame because they make wonderful pets. They’re often described as cats and dogs with feathers.

“Rescued hens are the friendliest on the planet because, of course, the industry give them antiaggression drugs. That’s why everyone loves them. In the same way that a dog wags its tail in response to your voice, a chicken will actually answer you back verbally. It’s that conversation that people are really warming to.”

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