We’ve been having a heatwave, and I noticed one of my new hens was clearly suffering from the heat. Not just any hen either, but Sunshine – named by my three-year-old granddaughter. She’s the sweetest one, happy to be handled and always following me around in the hope I’d protect her from the more boisterous girls.

When I realised she was really unwell, I put her in a cage in the coolest place I could find, thinking she’d be fine by the next morning once she’d regulated her temperature. Unfortunately, by morning it was obvious she’d had neither food nor water.

The good thing about living next door to a retired vet is that you can ring and ask all kinds of questions before committing to a trip to the surgery. (Like the time I casually gave my son’s dog a couple of grapes, only to be told they can be fatal. £160 later, I won’t be making that mistake again. 😱)

Back to the hen…

He advised giving Sunshine saline water with a little sugar by syringe every hour to get her fluids back up, along with moist food such as cucumber. It helped tremendously, but she still wasn’t herself, so we kept it up for another day or two.

Then I found two fat, juicy green caterpillars munching their way through a pepper plant.

Perfect!

I offered them to Sunshine on my finger and she enthusiastically gobbled them up.

Later that day I spotted a cabbage white butterfly inside my netted broccoli bed. (For the record, it’s surprisingly difficult to persuade a butterfly to leave through a narrow gap in netting.)

I wasn’t  surprised the following morning to find caterpillar carnage on one of the broccoli plants.

“I know exactly what to do with you little blighters,” I thought.

I gathered them up into a yoghurt pot and taking them to Sunshine. Cabbage white caterpillars are black and yellow, a little hairy, and can escape from a yoghurt pot much faster than I’d given them credit for.

I placed the pot inside her cage and waited, expecting the enthusiastic reception I’d witnessed the day before.

Fair to say what happened next was the last thing on my mind.

Sunshine lazily glanced into the pot and instantly let out the most horrendous squawk imaginable. She launched herself into the air, apparently forgetting she was in a small cage, shot forwards, smacked into the cage front, went completely rigid and fell backwards onto her back with her legs sticking straight up.

I thought I’d killed her with kindness.

Shocked and mortified, I ran for John. I’m still not entirely sure what I thought he could do, but it was my first instinct.

Moments later we were back. She was still lying in exactly the same alarming position, but thankfully she was breathing. John gently turned her over and she shook her head as though she’d just woken from a terrible dream.

I removed the yoghurt pot before she had chance to see it again. I wasn’t risking a repeat performance.

I’ve since wondered whether hens see black and yellow stripes and it means, “Don’t bother – I’m poisonous!” (They aren’t I checked.”

I’m only sharing this now because Sunshine is happily back with Sally Henny Penny and the rest of her friends, and seems none the worse for her ordeal.

Although… it has to be said… Sunshine is now giving me a very wide berth.