A Liskeard-based organisation is anticipating a busy year saving the lives of factory-farmed chickens that would otherwise be culled. Gail Woolfenden who runs the Animal Information Bureau from her home in Callington Road is making regular trips throughout Cornwall and Devon in a van to pick up hundreds of hens that would otherwise die. The organisation maintains a civilised link with producers so that the hens can be picked up when the most egg productive period of their lives ends at about 72 weeks They are then transferred to the freedom offered by volunteer homes. Although the bureau has been operating the chicken run for only six months, already 1,000 birds have been saved, and Gail says it will be many more this year. Word about the life saving action is growing so fast that she now has a waiting list of volunteers who find that the sight of chirpy chickens in their own back garden is the best possible reward.