This poor chilly girl is a rescued battery hen waiting to go to her new home - as newsletter subscribers will know, we have recently re-homed six ex-batts and it's been a great experience. We picked them up two weeks ago from Jim and Lorna Duff near Stirling - Jim and Lorna are the local reps for the Battery Hen Welfare Trust and do a wonderful job of liaising with the farmers and prospective new owners and then picking the hens up and giving then a health check. New owners then go to their farm to pick the hens up on the designated weekend.

This photo show our girls on their first day in their new home - they are very unused to everything a normal chicken would take for granted - like dark and silence and roosting and nesting. As you can see, they are also quite bald - but their feathers should grow back pretty quickly. And these are our first eggs! -

We are already getting one or two a day and slowly they should settle down and produce more than enough for all of us. I've fought the 'having our own chickens' thing for years - but the whole rescue chicken idea got to me immediately and I'm really pleased that we've gone for it.

As for names, the children have each named one so we have Lavender, Daisy and Un-named (so far!), then Ray who helps us here has named his Harriet, James has gone for Lady Marmalade and I asked my newsletter subscribers to help me out with a name for mine - there have been lots of great suggestions and I will be announcing the winner in our next newsletters (about 18th Dec).