Peggy, Roxy and Stacey scratch and squawk as they scrabble about on the ground. No, this is not a row outside the Queen Vic in an episode of EastEnders – it is life in the garden of animal lover Amey Evans.

Mrs Evans has turned her Rainham home into The Happy Pants Ranch – a sanctuary for all sorts of unwanted and abandoned animals – including 30 ex-battery hens which have been saved from slaughter.

Mrs Evans has adopted so many chickens she was struggling to come up with ideas for what to call them – so she decided to give them names of characters from the BBC soap.

Now the 32-year-old is calling on people in Medway take in their own feathered friends. She is working with Fresh Start for Hens – an organisation which finds homes for thousands of ex-commercial hens every year.

Laying hens are usually slaughtered at the age of 72 weeks, when their production drops slightly. But Fresh Start works with volunteers across the country to save them and hold several nationwide re-homing days each year.

Mrs Evans’ home in Berengrave Lane, Rainham, is one of the collection points – so she takes in the hens, which may have come from a farm several hours away, and local people who are adopting them go to her house to pick them up.

Mrs Evans has volunteered for the past three years and helped rehome about 300 hens.

She said ex-battery hens make great pets and, despite being deemed unviable by the commercial sector, they still have lots of life left in them.

She said: “Some ex-battery hens may not be in the best of health and may have lost their feathers but within six months they will have a new lease of life.

“They have got great characters, I think it is because they are so grateful to be looked after. They are very friendly and cheeky.

“Within a few minutes of arriving on collection day you start to see the difference in them. Before people come to collect them, I let them out to stretch their legs. They may never have been outside before but they start scrabbling around in the dirt, they know what to do.

“Their egg laying may have gone down but they still lay eggs and their eggs are much better than ones you buy in the supermarket. You can tell they come from happy hens. I would encourage anyone to adopt some ex-battery hens – you don’t need much outside space and they make great pets.”

Mrs Evans added: “I have got about 30 hens now so I’m running out of EastEnders names. I might have to move on to Coronation Street.”

To find out more about adopting hens, visit www.happypants.co.uk/hen-rehoming/