Disturbing pictures show “thousands” of dead chickens which baked to death in a poultry farm on the hottest day ever in the UK.

The animals were killed by lethal 102 degrees Fahrenheit heat on Thursday at Moy Park farm in Newton on Trent, Lincolnshire.

According to reports, workers were seen removing the birds in wheelbarrows after their dead bodies had been piled on top of each other outside.

The firm in charge of the farm supplies chicken meat to UK supermarket giants such as Sainsbury’s and Tesco.

Moy Park calls itself the “European Food Company of Choice” and was given an environmental management certification last September.

One worker told The Lincolnite that staff spent days collecting the dead animals from the farm warehouses.

“We tried to do everything but there was nothing more we could do. The freak weather has done this to them. Please don’t turn this into anything bad,” the worker said.

“It has been really tough carting these animals out of the farm over the past couple of days. Animal activists don’t think that we care about them, but we really do.”

Writing online, furious animal rights activist Mike Bushby said thousands of chickens had died at the farm on Thursday.

“These hens (1000s of them) died during (Thursday’s) heatwave,” he said.

“Can you imagine how much they suffered?”

Moy Park processes more than 280 million chickens every year, it has been reported.

“We are working closely with our farming partners to monitor the situation and have implemented procedures to help protect our birds against the extreme heat,” a spokesperson for the farm told The Independent.

The spokesperson did not say how many birds died from the heat or if any survived.

A Sainsbury’s spokeswoman said: “Animal welfare is extremely important and we’re in close contact with our suppliers about last week’s record temperatures.”

Met Office analysts claim Cambridge, 90 minutes’ drive south of the farm in Lincolnshire, recorded a temperature of 101 degrees Fahrenheit on Thursday, smashing Britain’s heat record.