Staff at a Shropshire recycling centre carried out an unusual rescue – saving a chicken from being crushed to death.

The chicken was plucked from a skip by workers at the Ketley Household Waste Recycling Centre in Telford, after a cardboard box with the bird inside was thrown into the crusher.

Workers at the site in Whitchurch Drive, Ketley, were left stunned when the bird’s head popped out of the box, and stopped the machinery before jumping in to rescue it.

Leeroy Jones, 26, site attendant, said: “We were standing by the side and people were throwing their boxes in when a lady shouted ‘there’s a live chicken in there’.

“Me and another lad turned the machine off, jumped in and took the chicken out.

“We just got it in time. The blade goes backwards and forwards and the box opened and the chicken popped up.”

Mr Jones said it was awful to think somebody had tried to crush the bird to death on purpose. “Whoever did it could have just let it go, they didn’t need to chuck it in there,” he said.

Workers at the site put the chicken into a shed and phoned the RSPCA.

But when Jim Burrell, from Hillbrae Kennels, Cold Hatton, arrived at the site to unload some metal, the workers realised they had found the perfect home.

Mr Burrell said: “We went to the tip to get rid of some iron. On the side of the van we’ve got our advert about boarding animals and birds and the staff saw this and said they’d got a bird and wondered if I could do anything with it.

“The chicken is fine. She’s a special breed. If you tried to buy one it would cost you about £30, but we already had some so we put her in with them and she’s grand now.”

Picture: Friends of the Burrell family Kieron Morgan, and Shanice Fudge, both from Hadley, take a look at the rescued chicken.