After the owners of the farm have gone to sleep, Major The old wise pig, called a meeting of all the animals . How healthy do the animals seem as they walk into the barn for The meeting?

In Chapter One, as the animals file into the barn, they seem to be in fine health. Only the ducklings come in "cheeping feebly", as they had lost their mother.

The two horses had just lain down when a brood of ducklings, which had lost their mother, filed into the barn, cheeping feebly and wandering from side to side to find some place where they would not be trodden on.