Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

A slightly less traumatic day today than yesterday, although both problems (daytime fox raids and our aggressive male turkey) still very much exist! Jupiter and Neptune were put out with the poultry today and told NOT to race around and make muddy holes in the grass (they ignored us) and the fox came back mid-afternoon to see if he could finish off the cockerel he tried to take yesterday. As luck would have it, our neighbour was passing by again and saw him prowling and so thanks to him and the presence of the alpacas, the fox left our paddock empty handed (or should that be empty-mouthed!!)!! Nonetheless, a reinforcement (not that we need it) of the fact that he or she is very persistent (as others have been before) and without the alpacas we could not possibly have ANY of our poultry outside now.
Napoleon, our male turkey, is still being terribly aggressive and unless we have something to wave him away with (we use plastic fencing stakes) we know he would manage to peck us. The word 'peck' suggests something light and gentle. These pecks are definitely not light and gentle. The cut and bruising on Jack's leg show what force there was behind Napoleon's beak: similar really to a very hard punch, but with a sharp point as well. The response from many farmers/smallholders when dealing when an aggressive animal like this is unfortunately to cull (put to sleep). Certainly if his behaviour does not change, we cannot continue to have him in the poultry paddock such that we (or indeed visitors and Joel and Arthur) cannot enter without fear of being injured. We are discussing our options!
And problem number three, as indicated at the start is that the spring poultry paddock is fast becoming a mud bath!!!! If it continues to rain so, we will lose a lot of grass and the grass that is left will take longer to recover. Another night of torrential rain is forecast so this problem is not going to go away either...