Remember Rudd (pronounced Rude)? Our splash marans that was attacked by a fisher cat and who almost had her head pulled off?
Well although she has fully recovered from her injuries, these days, she’s giving us new troubles. Our free range chickens had figured out that their favorite place to lay eggs is under the blackberry brambles (“brambled eggs” – not going to miss the opportunity to say that this time) It turns out that Rudd has gone broody on us and she’s decided that sitting on the eggs under the brambles is the place she ought to be.
She won’t budge. Which means if we don’t get her she’s outside for the night (and we all know how dangerous that is in New Hampshire.) She is also making it very difficult for us to gather the eggs we need for our breakfasts.
It also means that the other hens can’t use the outdoor blackberry facilities, as it were, which *ultimately* means we are on the hunt again for a nest somewhere in our yard where the chickens who have been displaced by Rudd are now laying their eggs. Seriously, it could be anywhere, we still haven’t found the hundreds of eggs that were laid by our ladies last summer.
Poor Rudd, she doesn’t know those eggs are unfertilized and will never hatch. It’s a fool’s journey.
And poor us, who have to get scratches on our arms and legs while we try each day to shoo Rudd away from what she so deeply feels is her calling. Yesterday, my darling Rudd even hissed at me when I tried to move her along. Settle down Rudd.
It’s not easy being a mama hen when all you want to do is what you were meant to do and others won’t let you, in fact, in this case, one can only say that for this chicken, it’s a rather Rudd awakening.
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Wendy Thomas writes about the lessons learned while raising children and chickens in New Hampshire. Contact her at [email protected]
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