An egg farm is attempting to re-home thousands of hens which would otherwise be slaughtered.

Macs Farm in Ditchling, near Brighton, UK, has 6,000 hens which need to ‘retire’ as they no longer lay enough eggs to sustain the business.

And farmer Susie Macmillan has appealed for any animal lovers to take on the hens as pets.

“We have worked with animal activists and a group called Fresh Start For Hens who have helped us re-home our girls,” she told The Argus.

“I have promised these hens that they will not be killed, so when they retire we always make sure to re-home them so they can go and become ‘ladies of leisure’ in their final years.

“They are the perfect hens to be homed in someone’s back garden, and in that environment they will happily keep laying plenty of eggs.”

Hens come to the end of their ‘commercial life’ when they’re about 72 weeks old, and Macs Farm has re-homed more than 100,000 hens over the years.

“They are just lovely girls, they follow you around and they are so friendly and are just very happy girls,” Macmillan told the local paper.

“We need to start reducing our number of hens on the farm because we have such a surplus.

“We currently give away eggs to charities that supply foodbanks, which is wonderful that we can support them, sometimes they take up to about 2,000 at a time.

“But it can cost the business up to about £4,500 a week, which is just not sustainable for us.”

Anyone wanting to adopt a hen can visit the farm’s website.