A QUICK-thinking teenager rescued a brood of fluffy farmyard chicks from imminent death after they were caught out by the weather during one of Britain's Britain's wettest ever months of June.

Fifteen-year-old Rose Harpley had left the family of seven chicks happily pecking round in the yard of her family's farm in Roeburndale, near Hornby.

But when the Queen Elizabeth School pupil returned to collect the chicks later that day, she found they had fallen victim to the unseasonable climes and were lying around the farmyard, apparently dead.

"We found them lying scattered all about, they were really cold and wet and I thought they had died," she said.

Rose decided to try to revive them using a method she had learned from a farmer friend. So she raced back to the house and put the chicks in a bowl of warm water, with some netting around them to prevent their tiny heads being submerged.

To her relief some of the birds began to gradually revive.

Although some of the chicks did not recover, the majority of the birds are now in full health, following their "hot pot" experience and are back in the farmyard.

For full story see the July 6 Westmorland Gazette.