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Re-Home

Ed Thompson

In 2012 European laws will be imple­men­ted to stop the caged bat­tery farm­ing of hens, with over 16 mil­lion hens cur­rently in bat­tery farms in UK and around 225 mil­lion in Europe, this will lead to envir­on­mental and eco­nomic implic­a­tions world­wide. What is to come of the 16 mil­lion UK hens in 2012 is unclear, but one thing is cer­tain, there will be a lot of ex-bat hens need­ing to be re-homed.

There has always been a need to re-home ex-battery farm hens; once they are around 18 months old they face ‘retire­ment’ as they are deemed unpro­duct­ive by the bat­tery farm­ers, even when most hens can poten­tially live for another four years.

Many people in the UK can play a part, as it’s not some dis­tant issue that is bey­ond the scope of the Brit­ish pub­lic, and unlike many envir­on­mental issues it’s one where we can all act dir­ectly. A res­cue hen costs only £3 and will provide you with free free-range eggs for around four years, in a time of eco­nomic reces­sion it can pay off to live The Good Life.

The Brit­ish Hen Wel­fare Trust, the largest UK group who res­cue and re-home hens, have a refresh­ing atti­tude in the world of animal rights/issues, that is they try to work with the bat­tery farm­ers, rather than fight­ing them. Because of this I inten­ded to pho­to­graph ori­ginal images and use humour to engage the viewer, rather than depend­ing on over used and clichéd shock imagery that only leads to more controversy