Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

Yesterday was really quite spring-like and all the animals had time outside in the fresh air! Today was a return to the wind and the rain and as the middle photo shows, yet more flooding of the winter poultry paddock. Last night we made the decision to abandon the summer poultry paddock (again!) and return all the birds to the barn and winter paddock. As we have been mentioning, the summer paddock is becoming muddy and we don't want BOTH poultry paddocks in such a bad state that neither can recover enough for the spring/summer. It is better that the winter one is the one to continue to suffer and for the summer one to be left to recover. We are hopeful that by the end of this month we 'may' be in a position to starting using it again.
With the birds back in the barn it does mean if any want to stay in (as they all did today) there is a lot more space than in the summer paddock houses and for the two cockerels below, some quiet time inside is not perhaps a bad thing. The cockerel on the left is the one that the fox tried to take last week (see 26th February). He is still very much with us as you can see although a little droopy at times and we are a little worried about his crop. The crop of a bird is a 'pouch' just below the throat that is used to store and then soften food before it gets taken down to the gizzard to be ground down. (The gizzard being part of the bird's stomach.) At night, a bird's crop should be nice and full of that day's food so that overnight the food can travel down to the gizzard resulting in an empty crop the following morning.
After his shock this chap took a while to start eating properly again but for the last couple of days he has been eating fine. His crop however feels weird: it is almost like it is in two parts. Whether one of these two parts is a lump from something else we do not know but we need to check it again first thing in the morning to see if either part has gone down. The other cockerel is this chap's dad and we think he may have been attacked by the fox too or certainly scared by him. He is quite subdued, his comb and wattles are injured from other birds pecking him (because he is poorly he gets picked on) and we have not heard him crow for days. We hope that having their own quiet corner in the barn will help both these birds to pick up a little...