Frequently Asked Questions
Here are some of the questions we are asked most often!
Very frequent questions...
- Can we come and visit you?
- Unfortunately, we are not a Farm Park, and regret that we are unable to host visits on site for the general public as we have no car parking or public handwashing/toilet facilities on site. We have links with Bocketts Farm Park, Leatherhead and Longdown Activity Farm, New Forest and can recommend them both if you wish to visit a farm.
- Should I be worried about e-coli?
- See our news articles on 15th September 2009 and 21st September 2009.
- Will the Bluetongue restrictions affect an event I am organising?
- At the time of writing (June 2008), this is unlikely to affect you. It would only be a problem if you are in a different zone to us - see DEFRA or ring us and find out.
- What animals do you bring out?
- Usually two piglets, two goats, a ewe with up to three lambs, two turkeys, two ducks, two chickens, rabbit, guinea pig, dog. Young animals are brought out wherever possible.
- How much will it cost?
- Prices depend on whether the visit is an educational (teaching) one or whether it is a social visit. We do not charge for the time taken to set up, take down or for our lunch break. Our prices are extremely competitive, and we try to keep the price of educational visits below the cost of hiring a coach as this is one of the biggest plus points of us coming to you! To get an accurate quote, contact us.
- How flexible are your timings?
- We have a minimum booking time of two hours, but you can choose when we start and when we finish - morning, afternoon or evening! We take bookings six days of the week (Monday-Saturday). We do not take any bookings on a Sunday as the animals and we need a rest.
- What do we need to provide?
- See the agreement page for a list of our requirements.
- How much is your Public Liability Insurance?
- Our Public Liability Insurance is for £10 million.
- Have you done Risk Assessments?
- Yes: you can download our Risk Assessments here. Most Risk Assessment is common sense and we would assume most people used common sense when viewing the animals. We do give a full safety briefing to children when on school/nursery visits before the children come into contact with the animals.
- Who comes out with the animals?
- Either Tom or Sarah come out on all visits. In addition, there will be one other adult, usually an agricultural college student, but at times it could be another qualified teacher. All staff are fully briefed before coming on visits and are debriefed afterwards. Both Tom and Sarah are CRB checked, and some other staff may be. However, no staff member should be left unaccompanied with children as the children are always the responsibility of the school, nursery staff, parents etc depending on the booking.
- Can I do my Work Experience with you?
- We are only able to have one work experience student with us at any one time. The student would need to be willing to work hard and able to handle animals. Experience with working with children would be useful. We always meet students before agreeing to let them do work experience to ensure they know what is expected of them and that we are happy in their abilities. Contact us and we can discuss your work experience further.
- How can you eat your own animals?!
- Tom has always eaten meat, but Sarah was vegetarian for 14 years as she didn't like the way animals were kept, bred and slaughtered for meat. She now only eats meat that she has reared herself. This way she knows the animals have been kept well, welfare has been of paramount importance, they have lived as natural a life as possible and they have been bred naturally (we do not use AI). We use an abattoir in Laverstoke, Overton for the bigger animals and the birds are killed on site here. Tom says the meat tastes better than supermarket meat as it is slow growing and not stressed by long journeys to the abattoir.
Some more unusual questions...
- A friend of mine is turning 30 next week, and has never milked a cow! It's on her list of things "to do before you're 30", and she is genuinely keen to do so. Obviously from an animal welfare point of view I understand farmers would be unwilling to allow people to, but I wondered if you offer, or know anyone who would be willing to offer her this opportunity?
- As you say, most farmers would not be prepared to allow this. However we may be able to help using Buttercup our model cow which allows people to master the technique of milking without any risk of upsetting a real animal. We also have a milking goat (a live one) which we milk every day so we would be quite willing to allow somebody to have a go with her once they have mastered the technique on the model cow. Unfortunately we do not have any live milking cows so this would not be an option.
- I have put some eggs under my broody chicken and today is day 7. I have tried candling with a small LED torch in a dark room but I can't see a thing! How do you do it?
- A candling lamp is basically a torch with a concentrated beam so that all the light goes through the egg and not around the outside of it. To be able to see inside an egg, either buy a candling lamp, or for the Blue Peter version, make a small hole in a piece of card, and put the egg one side and the small LED torch the other.
- I am a beekeeper living nearby and I was wondering if you would consider having hives of bees on your smallholding (perhaps for a small rent/in exchange for honey?)
- Sorry, but we already have a couple of hives on site being looked after by another local beekeeper.
- I am looking to increase our flock of pet chickens. Please could you let me know if you ever have any for sale?
- Occasionally we have hens for sale (we are careful not to sell cockerels as they tend to upset your neighbours). Contact us to see what we have available.
- On our local duck pond amongst all the ducks, geese, waterfowl etc have appeared two beautiful Cayuga ducks. I am interested to know whether these may have flown here or whether they have been abandoned by a previous owner. I suspect it is probably the latter and if so what are their chances of survival?
- As Cayuga ducks are heavy birds, it is unlikely they would have flown onto your pond. I think your hunch is correct and they were left there by someone. As for survival, if they are fed (depending on the amount of food available from the pond, and whether the ducks are used to being fed domestically with commercial duck feed etc) and if they have somewhere to be safe from foxes at night, then there is no reason why they shouldn't survive.
- The eggs I was incubating (in an incubator or under a broody hen) have been accidentally dropped and now have cracks in them. Will they still hatch or should I throw them away?
- My answer would have been throw them away - but this happened to us at the beginning of September when the incubator was accidentally dropped after eight days of incubation. We didn't expect the chicks to carry on developing but left the eggs in the incubator just in case. All three chicks continued developing normally inside the eggs right to the end. Two of the three eggs then pipped and one hatched into a healthy chick!