Recipe For Success

British Hen Welfare Trust founder, Jane Howorth, MBE, celebrates the charity’s 12th anniversary, with a look back over the many successes achieved.

Roll back to 2005, to a time when commercial laying hens were still in battery cages. In those days there was no other destination for these little birds, other than the slaughterhouse. No hope of a free-range future, or of enjoying life as a much-loved pet.

Fast-forward a dozen years, to 2017, and the picture is a very different one. Thanks to the work of the British Hen Welfare Trust, founded by Jane Howorth 12 years ago, 550,000 hens have been taken out of their cages, and adopted into family life in back gardens across the UK, where they’ve lived a full, happy and, most importantly, free-range retirement.

Spurred into action

Jane was inspired to start helping ‘exbats’ after watching an episode of the BBC’s Panorama, broadcast in 1979. Titled Down on the Factory Farm, the programme highlighted the plight of commercial laying hens, and the fact that they never got the opportunity to experience the outdoors at any point in their short lives.

The re-homing initiative remains at the core of the charity to this day, although the organisation has grown into a complex, national operation that’s co-ordinated from Hen Central, in Devon. In addition, it’s supported by 500+ volunteers across more than 30 regional, pop-up, re-homing venues.