Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

Our chickens continue to delight and amuse. Cowboy, our little orphan Indian Game does not seem to be getting any bigger as this photo of him by one of our the cockerels clearly shows. Cowboy is the size of a three-four week old chick even though he is now eight weeks old. The cockerel is just FIVE months old!! Yet each evening when they are all safely 'tucked up' for the night we feel Cowboy's crop (the part of the chicken that holds all the food they eat before it travels down to the stomach) and it is full of food! So, he is obviously eating and drinking fine. He continues to be really plucky and independent and we very rarely see him get picked on by the other birds. We really want him to continue to survive.
Our nightly routine also consists of having to move the three chicks in the second photo 'off' the goat platform where they and their two siblings perch every night and put them in with all the other youngsters in the poultry part of the barn. They ought to go there themselves, all the other chicks do. Usually after a week or so of moving chickens like this, they learn to go to the correct place themselves. Not this lot!! We are now on day 15 and they are showing no signs of changing their habits at all!!! The goats don't mind but we do - during the night, chickens can poo a lot and we don't want to have to clean the goat platform every morning. (And we are pretty sure the goats don't want chicken poo on their platform either.)