I was significantly disappointed by our visit today, which we only made because of so many positive recommendations.
Firstly, it's a working farm yes. Which is great and definitely authentic. But the public facilities are also very working farm. Dirty, dank and dingy toilets, and eating areas are very dated. I have a potty training age child, and had to kneel in dead insects, ground water and and filtg during every toilet visit. I can forgive this as most of the time people aren't kneeling on bathroom floors, but I was very close to seeing the state of things even at first opening.
Another issue that is also forgivable, and maybe we just came on a bad day. But when we arrived at opening there were atleast 6 school groups there. I am very sure this increased through the day. And this meant every part of the farm was dominated by these groups, and there were just too many people around. I understand the financial incentive of this, but it was a big downer on our experience. I work in museums and we have caps on school groups depending on the site size. I recommend you cap to 3 a day.
The signage is awful. You have a good map online. Maybe put a few up on the grounds?
But what I couldn't forgive was the conditions for the animals. So I understand the normal farm conditions, the indoor areas and calfs/lambs separated from mums. I've seen that elsewhere. But I think I became worried when it came to the "non farm animals". The staff it pet corner were great, but it was a machine for the animals and I found it horrific. It upset me to the verge of tears. Way too many children for a start, it was impossible for the 3 workers to ensure important handling standards across the approx 40 children (many toddlers and babies), 20+ adults in the room. This is vital for animal welfare. It was very noisy. A special educational needs group in the room with us were visibly disturbed by the noise and scared of the enslaught of animals. You should have run a separate, smaller, quiet session for them with more 1 on 1 handling support. An owl shouldn't be mauled by 100+ people every day. They shouldn't really be stroked at all. I was worried for the safety of these animals.
I was also concerned for the donkeys. They were well controlled and appeared healthy, but with the 6+ school groups, they were all constantly being ridden in the 4 hours we were there and I felt uncomfortable about it.
But then I went it the "reptile room", a forgotten dark corner of the site and I was shocked. The pythons were in a filthy enclosure which a lot of poo and shed skins that had clearly been around for a while. The enclosures were tiny and cheaply constructed with raw screws jutting out, and peeling plastic grass. The "unusual" animals in the outdoor area are housed in tiny, old, dingy enclosures with little coverage and absolutely no greenery. For the owls in particular, this is unacceptable. It was deeply saddening.
I enjoyed seeing the cows, the working farm side and the ice cream is very nice. The homemade milk products are clearly very good, but very cheap meat sold in the cafe (Richmond sausages). I just think there's work to be done on managing the public side of the farm, balancing your financial needs with animal care, and you should remove the exotics and birds to appropriate specialist conservation animal organisations. I think in parts the animal care was unethical, and that outweighs any...
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