Our 38 cock-a-hoop chickens!

REBECCA RUSHWORTH, 34, is a furniture restorer and lives near Blackpool with husband Chris, 45, a company director, and children Sienna, six and Frankie, four. She says:

LIVING in splendour at the bottom of our large garden are 38 chickens, all rescued during the pandemic.

Although ordinarily they are free range, a nationwide outbreak of avian flu means the chickens are also under lockdown in their main 30ft covered run, which is book ended with two impressive, handcrafted coops.

The outside is decorated with bunting, flowers and wreaths made from twigs so they look pretty.

Inside, I’ve used old drawers to make a nesting box for each chicken, filled with hay or wood shavings and sprinkled with dried lavender so they smell fragrant.

Sienna and Frankie helped me to paint three old tyres in bright colours for the chickens to play with and we tie cabbages to the wire meshing on the sides of the run for them to peck at.

On the floor is lots of soil and diatomaceous earth, which helps protect them from parasites and keeps their feathers shiny.

We’d never kept chickens before but got our first four at the start of the first lockdown — including my favourite, named Sadie after Chris’s late grandma — from local charity giveahenahome.co.uk, which rescues them from battery farms.

I thought it would be wonderful for my children to be involved in their daily care. Having this routine at a time when everything else has been so changeable has been a lifesaver.

After rescuing several more chickens, word got out locally and people now

phone me to dash to the aid of other chooks in need.

Last month a chap called to say his elderly neighbour had died and he’d since found a forgotten cockerel and six hens in the old man’s coal shed.

The cockerel, David, needed daily salt baths to help heal his sore legs while his harem of six girls required food and nurturing to nurse them back to health.

We now have 30 hens who lay at least 15 eggs a day between them so I’ve made a little stall at the front of our house where villagers can buy them.

Last week I was about to throw away an old bistro table and chairs when my husband suggested I should put them inside the run so that I can sit and have a glass of red wine while the chickens peck around my feet — which is exactly what I did in the beautiful spring sunshine last weekend.