SICK thugs who slaughtered a clutch of prize hens and burned down their shed are being hunted by police.

The birds, which were recently bought by John Welden for his eight-year-old son Michael, were killed by mystery attackers at their shed on allotments at Cross Lane, Sacriston, near Chester-le-Street.

Bodies of battered and burned hens littered the ground next to the charred remains of the wooden shed that, up until Wednesday last week, held more than 30 hens.

Mr Welden, of Westhills Close, Sacriston, says they lost at least ten hens in the senseless attack.

He said: "I don't understand how anyone could do this. What was going through their heads?

"I'd only just bought the pedigree hens for my son Michael because we planned to get eggs off them. We paid a small fortune for them.

"Now I had to show him the awful scene down here the other morning."

He said the vandals had been into the shed and taken some hens out and killed them.

"Then they set fire to the shed with the rest of the hens inside, but thankfully most of them escaped because they left the door open.

"I don't understand the motive behind it. Maybe they were druggies I don't know.

"It is definitely not a personal grudge thing though because we never bother anybody. We have no enemies."

Police want to speak to anyone who may have seen anything suspicious around the Cross Lane allotments before 9.45pm on February 20, when the fire was started.

A police spokeswoman said: "We are carrying out inquiries in the area to find the culprits, but at the moment we do not have a lot to go on."

Mr Welden said he was offering a £100 reward for information that leads to the arrest of those people responsible.