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on Events

Easter is coming!

Hopefully there’s less snow and more sunshine, but that only time will tell… As per usual, we’ll be running extra activities during the Easter holidays.

  • During the week from Tuesday to Friday we’ll have our Animal Handling (Tues & Thurs) and Groom A Goat (Weds & Fri), running from 10:00 – 12:00pm and 2:00 – 4:00pm 
  • Pony Rides will be running on all those days too at 12:00pm as well at 3:00pm on Saturdays and Sundays.
  • Good Friday, Easter Sunday and the first week of the holidays you’ll be able to take part in our craft activities! (Supplies permitting)
  • From Good Friday through to the following Friday will be our Easter Egg Hunt!
  • The Barn Owl Café will be open from 10:00 – 3:00pm, and the kiosk in the portacabin will be open until 4:30pm

We will also be running our regular holiday programme with Own A Pony and Young Farmer days. There’s still spaces available so for further information and booking check our holiday programmes page. 

 

on The Farm

Nick’s Birdland

Yesterday we had our final unveiling of a new sign and plaque for our finished duck area. This marks the completion of the long labour of love with rebuilding our chicken enclosures, aviaries and new duck pond, a project which started in early 2015. 

Our old chicken area was just about clinging on, but with many years of bodges and improvised repairs, it was starting to suffer a bit to say the least, so the plan was to demolish the whole thing, plan a new layout and make much better use of the space. Ultimately we’d end up moving all the aviaries out to the front as well, including Edna the owl and our canaries and finches! 

As with many things, and especially being a small charity, funds is always something we have to be aware of. It was during one such appeal for help that we were contacted by Brian & Sally, who have been of immense help during this project. They got in touch wanting to contribute to create a lasting memorial for his son, Nick, who passed away in 2000. His love of animals and their input has helped shape the latter half of our re-build.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NICK’S BIRDLAND

Our son Nick died in 2000 following a long battle against testicular cancer. He was 23 years old. In the years following his death we have looked at different ways of creating a lasting memorial to him and have waited to find the right opportunity.

Then in August 2015, having seen an appeal by Deen City Farm for funds to create a new duck pond area, we met with the Farm managers and agreed to sponsor the development. We also funded the new aviary, additional chicken enclosures, Edna’s owl house and the chick hatchery which are next to the new duck pond.

This wonderful area represents Nick’s love of animals and the musical notes in the mural on the back wall of the duck pond speak of his great interest in music.
We have called the area NICK’S BIRDLAND and we hope all visitors to the Farm will appreciate and enjoy this special place.

We wish to thank all the staff and volunteers at the Farm for the tireless commitment and effort which has brought this project to fruition.

Brian Dillon

 

 

on The Farm

Happy birthday Edna!

♬~Happy birthday to you~♫ Happy birthday to you~♪ Happy birthday dear Ednaaaaa~♩ Happy birthday to you!

Edna, our resident Barn Owl, is celebrating her 6th birthday today! Livestock Manager Tom has treated her to some new decorations in her aviary. 

 

Edna has been living with Tom since she was 10 weeks old, so it’s been quite a while! Because Edna was hand raised, she’s never been suitable to be released into the wild, so is very content with living amongst humans. In the wild, most Barn Owls don’t make it to their first year, but in captivity with proper care they can live upwards of 15 years, so Edna’s got many more years ahead of her! 

If you don’t already, you should definitely check out our instagram account! 

on Latest News The Farm

The Cheviot Landrace Goat comes to DCF!

As if the coming summer wasn’t busy enough, we’ve had a troop of new arrivals at the farm. If you’ve popped down in the past couple of weeks, you might have noticed a rather handsome looking group of goats has turned up! They are currently in isolation in one of our large pens on the farmyard, but hopefully it won’t be long before they can go out and join the other livestock grazing in the paddocks. 

There’s more to these goats than meets the eye though! These are Cheviot Landrace Goats, a truly Old English breed. Without getting too complicated, if you were to go back in time these are the goats you would find roaming feral across the English countryside. They were deemed a pest, and bought very close to extinction. The 9 goats we’ve got at Deen City Farm have come from a Thorndon Country Park in Essex, and will form the start of our breeding group! 

 

Even though these goats have been used to living without much human contact, it’s amazing how fast they can settle in! The kids are still a bit shy, but the adults are very happy to come over and check out any hands for tasty grass nuts. Did you know that goats are the second fastest animal to adjust to living feral? (Cats being the fastest!), it seems the opposite is true too, and they’re very quick to get used to people as well! 

 

The goats that were chosen from the herd to come to Deen City Farm were picked out with the assistance of our colleague (and master of all things goat!) Ray Werner, an expert on all things Cheviot Goat. When it comes to picking the ideal goats, it’s not just about picking out the ones that you like the look of, you need to know what to look for (hence Ray’s expert input!). The one male and three females were picked out from the crowd based on their colour patterns, good conformation and movement as well as meeting the breed standards devised by the Cheviot Landrace Goat society. 

After a nervous few days, it wasn’t long before the goats have settled well into city farm life, generally minding their own business unless there’s any tasty snacks on offer! The kids are a little bit nervous, but we’re getting there! Come down and say hello to them during the summer! 

on The Farm

The pitter patter of tiny feet…

If you’ve been following our Facebook or Instagram posts (which you should be!) you might have seen some photos of our newest arrivals at the farm. This week we’ve had two very small and very cute new comers to the farm. Say hello to Spritz and Blitz! They are a brother and sister pair of 12 week old Pygmy Goats. At the moment they’re a bit nervous – it’s a lot to take on, going from their quite small holding onto a busy little farm, so they might be a bit shy for now, but we hope that will change shortly! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pygmy goats are a popular breed for people to keep; you may have seen some before at other farms. They’re small (as the name might give away) and like most goats, can be very friendly! These two are still a bit nervous around people, so it’ll take them a while to get used to their new life, but we reckon they’ll soon settle in. 

 

This particular pair are locally bred, from the lovely people behind Pecking Orders!

on Events

Young Artist’s Day, Saturday 20th May!

Looking for something to do on Saturday 20th May? Feeling like letting your inner artist lose? 

One of our lovely volunteers, Gaja, will be running a Young Artists Day workshop for ages 3 – 7 in our Porta-cabin!

It’ll be running from 11:00am to 1:00pm. Just turn up and join in for £2.50, all the art materials will be provided and there may even be a prize in it for the Best Young Artist! 

 

Young Artists day Poster

on Latest News

Oscar’s Playground will be closed 27th & 28th April

Hello all!

We’re sorry about the short notice, but Oscar’s Playground next to the picnic area will be closed for the remainder of today and much of tomorrow. This will give us time to complete the extension of the seating area before the weekend. 

We’re sorry to cause any inconvenience or disappointment – there’s still lots to see and do at the Farm, so don’t let it put you off visiting!

on Education

Incubating with Netmums

Easter’s over, now if only the sun would come back and warm everything up again, brr!

A big thank you to everyone who came down to visit, it was a very busy two weeks. All the animals (and staff I’m sure) will be glad to have a little bit of calm before May half term. During Easter, as well as our popular Hug A Lamb with Edgar and Eleanor (who are now back to living with the rest of the sheep, their work is done!) and Animal Handling in the marquee we had some new chick arrivals!

If you happen to follow NetMums on Facebook, you might have seen a familiar logo on an incubator during one of their live streams a few weeks ago. We had started incubating some of our chicken eggs to test everything before we begin our School Incubator Scheme next term, when NetMums got in touch wanting to broadcast it on their Facebook page. Given that we already had some on the go, it made sense to go with it!

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Out of the 10 eggs, only about half of them were fertile. And of course, after saying how good chickens are at hatching on the dot on day 21 of incubation, most of them decided to hatch a day early, leaving us with one lone egg on live stream day! If you want to watch the hatching process, you can see the video on their Facebook page here. The hatching process takes a long time, so if you want to skip to the interesting parts, have a look from 1:30:00 onward. 

The chicks are now housed in our Incubation Shed – the newest part of the renovations to our bird area at the entrance side of the farm. They’re still a bit too small to go outside, so have to stay with a heat lamp for now, but hopefully in a few weeks and when the weathers warmer they’ll be able to come outside properly.

On the topic of incubating though, in the next two weeks we’ll be starting our School Incubator Scheme (which is already fully booked for this academic year!). In another month and a half we’ll be welcoming back all the chicks that various local schools have hatched, so there’ll be plenty to see! If you’re interested in buying chickens to keep, whilst we don’t have any for sale at the moment, we will do in a few months time! 

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on The Farm

New arrivals – the lambs!

The lambs have arrived, Spring is definitely in the air! Our first pair of lambs was born during a sunny lunch break at the start of this month and the other ewes soon decided to follow suit. We’ve ended up with 7 new arrivals in total (three sets of doubles and one big burly single). With the help of our Junior Volunteers they’ve been christened Edgar, Eleanor, Audrey, Anne, Grace, Galileo and Martin. 

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At Deen City Farm we keep a flock of Poll Dorset sheep, which lamb every year around late February/March time. If you ever see a breed or animal described as a “poll” or “polled” it means it doesn’t have horns – the Poll Dorset sheep is descended from an old English breed known as the Dorset Horn, which as you can imagine from the name, is well recognised for it’s rather impressive, large curly horns. We’ve got a soft spot for our Poll Dorset sheep, not only do they have a great personality (even our ram, Herman, is a gentle giant) but they make exceedingly cute lambs. Judge for yourself! 

If you want to try your luck with telling them apart, the stock marker letters on the side of all the sheep will definitely help out. The ewes can tell which lambs are theirs from their smell and calls, but for us humans it’s a little bit harder. Every sheep (apart from the boys in their separate field) has the first letter of their name on them – with the lambs, the names begin with the same letter as their mothers name, and the letters in blue are girls, and any in green are boys. Simple!  

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