The Saga of Beatrice...the hen with a stroke

One of the last hens, walking homeward

Dusk tonight.

With the nights drawing in and the weather deteriorating , "locking up" the animals for the night can be a bit of a chore. With the turkeys, ducks and geese all safely bedded down and the pigs fed and watered, all I have to do at dusk is to wait for the hens to totter back to their houses in the Ukrainian village before locking the doors for the night.

You cannot hurry hens, if you do they will invariably run in exactly the opposite direction that you want them to go, so I have got into the habit of sitting under the Churchyard trees with the guinea fowl chattering gently above my head listening to Radio 4 Extra as in groups of two and three, the hens head homeward.

Stanley

Just as I switched over to The Archers,  I noticed that Stanley the cockerel was still outside his hen house. It was getting dark,and instead of roosting, he was stamping outside the coop door clucking loudly with concern into the wind..

As I walked down towards him to see what was up, he suddenly lifted himself up and galloped across the field some fifty yards into the long grass, where he danced around for a bit before racing back to the coop door.

He did this three times before I reached him and he was still clucking loudly when I found out just why he was so excited, for lying in the grass was one of his hens, a Rhode island red called Beatrice.

She was alive, and was manfully trying to hop her way back to her roosting coop before dark,  However her left leg and wing were dragging uselessly on the ground for she had suffered the common affliction that chickens often suffer from, she had experienced a stroke.

Generally when hens stroke out, the best thing to do is to put them out of their misery, they can never be left with other hens as their fluttering and odd behaviour always illicit bullying. Left in the open with the more aggressive turkeys,  a disabled hen will be pecked to death within minutes, so generally it is kinder to "do the right thing"

But  with, her heroic effort to return to her coop and the concern of her rooster, to save her, I decided to give the old hen a chance and set her up in an old rabbit hutch for the night....

I have just checked on her,  she is still paralysed , but ate a  load of corn well and looked bright enough even though she couldn't walk........another lame duck (hen) to care for me thinks.....

I'll never make a proper farmer will I?