Summer of adventure at the Farm!

farm family fun collage

We love Summer here at The Farm… hay making in the fields and busy with our fun summer activity programme on the farmyard, all topped off with our Country Fair event on 23-25^th August and our wonderful Harvest Festival on 27/28^th September where we get to look back and appreciate the year so far…

Equines

The donkeys are so busy at the minute as our lovely volunteers take them out regularly to practise their long reining. Our goal is to do some little harrowing demonstrations with them for the visitors this season so watch this space… Unfortunately all the training doesn’t seem to be having much impact on their waistlines!

We had an unbelievably sad time at the start of June when after 12 months of anticipation Tabitha, our Shire horse mare, gave birth to a stillborn foal. It has taken both her and us a while to get over it but life on the farm goes on and working with animals often comes with heartache and teaches us all resilience. Thankfully Tabitha is physically fine and at least we have her home now after an extended stay at the foaling yard. It did mean that only Friar got to show off at the Cheshire Show as Sensation stayed home to keep Tabby company. He did a wonderful job of showcasing Tatton Park and the ridden heavy horse with his best friend Ace the Clydesdale. The fun and excitement of the Cheshire Show was much needed for the staff after a sad couple of weeks as well.

Pigs

Martha our Middle White and Skye our Saddleback are both due their litters of piglets on 1^st August. Perhaps they will go on the same day like Bonnie and Susie did last time? Bobby the boar has been working hard and these will be his first litters of piglets so we are excited to see how they turn out. Lola and Luna, our mother and daughter Large Whites, are ruling the piggery as usual and making us all laugh with their antics and sass!

Sheep

We had a hugely successful lambing with over 50 lambs being born within a week! Lots of triplets and 2 sets of quads has left us with 7 lambs on the bottle which the visitors have enjoyed helping us to feed over the last couple of months. We will be using some of these Pet Lambs in our sheep racing activity over the summer holidays so don’t forget to come along and see who’s fastest down the racetrack! We also sheared all our sheep at the start of June which is always a relief for us and them.

Cows

Calving has started with some gorgeous calves born to Gracie, Jasmine and Hetty in our dairy herd. We are now milking Gracie and Jasmine daily and are hoping to do it for the visitors as part of our summer activity programme. The cows keep their calves on them and we just take the excess. The extra milk is very useful when you have 7 pet lambs to feed! We have 3 Red Polls due to calve as well so we are hoping they will, have some lovely heifer calves that will stay in our herd.

Goats

Our three Golden Guernseys – Amber, Emily and little Rose and Betty our Angora cross are all doing really well. Did you know that King Charles has bequeathed the title of ‘Royal’ onto all Golden Guernsey goats? Emily and her daughter Rose really stole the show at the Knutsford Mayday Parade this year. Amber continues to boss the others round and Betty looks great since being sheared. Did you know our goats favourite thing is banana skin?!!

Poultry

Finally Avian Flu restrictions were lifted and our lovely poultry is back to being free range, messing up the animal pens, dust bathing and sunbathing everywhere and trying to steal picnics whenever possible! It’s meant we could finally open the hatchery and our third batch of eggs are due to hatch on 5^th July. We are back to doing daily Meet the Chicks sessions for all our visitors.

Please check out the events section of the website for more info on our Summer Activity Programme, Country Fair and Harvest Festival.