A farmer has told of his secret weapon to improve the egg yield of his hens - sheep.

Bill Martin, from Kent, says his free-range birds now produce 10% more eggs after he introduced sheep into their fields.  He puts the success down to the fact that the hens are protected by the sheep.  He said: "Hens are timid animals and can get distressed if there is a loud noise like a plane going over. By putting the sheep in with them they seem to relax - and happy hens produce better eggs."

Mr Martin heads a collective of 400 producers under the name of Stonegate.  He resorted to the sheep minders after becoming concerned that his hens were being stressed out by sudden noise.  Research has previously shown that high stress levels in hens leads to poor productivity and lower quality eggs.

Mr Martin, 64, said his grandfather used to keep sheep and hens together and he decided to revive the custom.

A Romanian housewife has found three fully formed chicks inside a hen she was preparing to cook. The hen hadn't laid an egg for days and she says it had been acting somehow peculiar. The woman is reported to have become scared and called a vet and a priest to the house.

Maria Simind, from Abrud in the county of Alba, described the incident as a 'wonder', reports the newspaper Libertate. Local vet Ioan Radu said: "The three chickens were already formed. They were in different stages but not too far one from the other.

"The biggest one had some feathers on its head and all were wrapped in some kind of membrane but not similar to the calcareous shell like the eggs have."

Daniel Parker, president of the British Veterinary Poultry Association, told Ananova the bird may have had a tear in an ovary duct which the fertilised egg then slipped through.  He added: "It is not unusual to see eggs in the abdomen but it would be unusual to see a fertilised embryo there. It is doubtful whether these chicks would have developed to full term."

An environment project in Thailand is exchanging eggs for rubbish.  The government scheme is an attempt to clean up the northeast municipality of Nakornratchasima and boost recycling. 

The Department of Environment offers eggs in return for old paper, plastic, glass and scrap metal. Villagers can also trade rubbish for rice or plants if it is of sufficient value.

The Mayor of Nakornratchasima, Surawut Cherdchai, told the Kao Sod newspaper the project was intended to encourage recycling and environmental awareness in an area which has serious problems of disease and waste disposal.  Since the project started the daily amount of garbage collected for disposal has already fallen from 200 tons a day to 175 tons.

Mr Cherdchai said in the near future all schools and temples in the area will have 'egg exchange' centres.

It is also planned to offer a points system so that villagers can save up for a bicycle.

Putting egg-laying hens in battery cages is to be outlawed in Germany. The move puts Germany ahead of Europe-wide moves towards more natural farming in the wake of the mad cow crisis.

Under legislation passed by the upper house of parliament, farmers will have to house birds in free-range coops or aviaries by 2012.  Battery cages will be phased out within four years, starting with 450-square-centimeter wire cages by the end of 2002.

Agriculture Minister Renate Kuenast has pledged to steer German farmers away from industrial-scale methods suspected of fostering mad cow disease. Her predecessor was forced to resign last January after the disease was detected here. Crowded cages have been blamed for encouraging the spread of diseases such as salmonella, which can be transmitted to humans who eat infected eggs.

Animal-rights supporters have hailed the decision. They estimate that 90% of the country's 42 million laying hens are kept in battery cages stacked in large sheds where lighting and feeding are all mechanically controlled.

Critics say cheap eggs will flood in from countries where battery farming is still allowed, but Ms Kuenast states nine out of 10 consumers are willing to pay more for free-range eggs.