Sarah's the leader of the peck

Sarah Holden with one of her prized battery hens

Sarah Holden is one happy chick now she has quit her job as a graphic designer and lives on a farm full of her feathered friends.

She has even swapped the school run for the chicken run!

The 32 year old doesn't count her chickens, though, because there are too many.

The mother of two's dream when she and her husband bought the Thornton House Farm, Preesall in early 2006 with her husband Richard was to keep hens.

Now she has over 1000 hens as well as ducks, geese, pigs, peacocks, peasants, doves, rhea, turkeys, guinea fowl and cats!

Back to basics

"It's the best thing I've ever done," Sarah said of their move from a 'normal life' in Blackpool, as she describes it, to the countryside.

The seven acre farm over Wyre is a stone's throw from her son and daughter's school and has a beach at the bottom of the garden plus plenty of room for her burgeoning collection of animals.

"I live and breathe poultry. I can't help it. I can't imagine life without my hens."

Frightened of missing out on the farm, they bought it at auction before they had sold their house in Blackpool. They quickly learned about being self sufficient; it took a year to sell. "We really had to go back to basics until we eventually sold it. Paying two mortgages nearly killed us!

The ex-battery hens shelter from the rain at Happy Chicks farm

"There were no treats for anybody but we grew all our own vegetables and raised pigs for the table.

"It has stuck with us and we still grow and eat as much as we can off the farm." Not her prized poultry, though, she quickly points out.

Money might have been tight but they got a warm welcome from the neighbours. Knowing she had always wanted hens, one of her neighbours bought her three ex-battery hens from a local farmer. "It was such a kind gesture," said Sarah.

"We loved them so we went back a few weeks later and bought another six.

"We were back before we knew it for another six, then 18 more and before we knew it we had eggs coming out of our ears."

They couldn't possibly eat them all so they decided to open an egg shop appropriately called Happy Chicks with an honesty box at the front of the farm. They bought 280 'point of lay' commercial laying hens to make it worthwhile.

They finished up with a laying flock of over 1000 hens on top of their 'own' pets, the original ex-battery hens and several other rare breeds they had adopted.

Supreme pets

She says chickens are supreme pets and can be just as affectionate as cats and dogs plus they produce 'eggtra' special presents. "They follow me around for cuddles. They are very low maintenance; they need very little time and attention and will amuse themselves around the garden.

"You don't need to take them for a walk and they save you so much money on eggs."

She says they understand her, too."They know perfectly well the difference between, 'Get out of the kitchen!' and 'Do you want corn girls?' by the tone of my voice."

Sarah and Richard have sheep, too, on their seven acre farm

It's not just Sarah; an increasing number of people in the UK are opting to keep chickens as pets. Sarah explains: "There has been a massive growth in 'grow your own' and people want to know where their food has come from and the conditions the animals were kept in."

She has started running a 'Keeping Chickens' course to help with the requests from new hen owners.

Siuna Reid - a vet at the Veterinary Health Centre Ltd in Lytham - has witnessed the rise in popularity for keeping ex batts in her surgery. She has 15 clients with rescue hens on her books.

Siuna applauds the course. "It is a great idea - and very enterprising - to make sure people know how to keep them and look after them."

Rehab

As well as her laying hens and own ex battery pets, Sarah rescues hens and re-homes them after nursing them through 'rehab' as she calls it, the transition from confinement to a free-range life.

On average she plucks about 30 chickens from battery farms a week but Sarah admits it is not always that easy to walk away from the others. This week, for instance, she intended to get 30 but ended up coming home with 220.

Not all hens survive, though. "A very small percentage don't make it but if they make it through the first week they can live for another three to five years and they will carry on laying around 250 eggs a year."

Some can last longer; one of Sarah's neighbours has a 12 year old chicken. "Once they have been rescued they take about six to ten weeks to start looking beautiful again."

If they are still producing eggs why do battery farmers get rid of them? "Commercially, it's not worth keeping them through their first moult. The battery farm has had the best laying year out of them although they still have productive years left in them."

In Christmas 2008 she decided to quit her day job and concentrate full-time on her animal farm. "I've done graphic design since I was 18 and my heart wasn't in it any more. Although I was self-employed and worked from home I needed more time to spend with the hens. I'm so glad I did."

She now spends the day tending - and singing - to her animals and running her chicken shop selling poultry products and treatments which Richard built for her.

It hasn't been completely idyllic, though. She was devastated when a fox got in a small gap in the wall and killed 20 ducks. "I ran in the house crying saying it wasn't worth it and we had to stop. Then some rhea eggs which had been in the incubator for five weeks hatched and I was ecstatic!"

Chicken shop

Now she has established a hen haven she wants to open a 'hen hospital' next. "I'd love to open a drop-in centre for sick chickens. I already give advice over the phone which works really well and we stock something for nearly every problem hens can ever get."

Sarah and husband Richard with a newly hatched chick

She also wants to write a warts-and-all book on what it's like to become a farmer in your 30s. Sarah hopes to open an education centre, too, for children to learn about the life cycle of the egg and chicken and where food comes from.

So what does her husband make of her hen obsession? "Richard is really supportive; he does a lot of the work here, too. He told me if I wanted to do it I should go for it. Besides, the chicken shop was his idea."

Although Sarah had no previous experience of hens, Richard has poultry in his blood. His family are from Pilling and for generations they have had poultry on their farm. He is a property developer but he spends much of his time helping out on the farm.

Her daughter - who wants to be a vet when she grows up - helps out on the farm and wears her Happy Chicks uniform with pride. Although her son loves living on a farm and helps out, too, he isn't too enthusiastic about his mum's obsession.

"I think he's a bit embarrassed his mum 'plays with chickens and sings all day' as he puts it!" laughed Sarah.