IT'S not often that architecture used to design homes for people is adapted for animals, but one 10-year-old has done just that.

Josh Talbot's dad John is chairman of Earth Homes Limited, which develops curvilinear low-impact, earth-sheltered housing which would cope with global warming.

Now the schoolboy has built a miniature version of his dad's designs for his hen and her newborn chicks.

"Chickens aren't square so why should they have to live in a box? They fit more snugly into my curvy pen," said John, from Hawford Wood, near Ombersley,

John added that so far, the family's hen seems to have taken to her unconventionally shaped habitat rather well.