On Tuesday we took my 16 month old niece, Sophie, to Umberslade Farm Park. The estate encompasses arable, beef and sheep production as well as plenty of woodland and the farm park. It was a lovely, sunny (but cold!) day and we had a great time.
They have lots of livestock for the kids (and adults!) to see and spring is the perfect time to visit with lambing this time of the year and lots of young calves about. We visited the ponies first and Sophie loved them and thought that the Shetlands were very funny! Then we went to the activity barn where the sheep, goats and some cows were. There were lots of pygmy goats, and some small kids as well as a couple of boer goats. The hilight of the activity barn had to be the Jacobs sheep were three lambs were cuddled up to their mum, they were only born that morning. It was incredible to see such tiny animals up on their feet playing already. There were some friendly donkeys too.
In the goat house there was also a hutch with a few ferrets, and one of the days scheduled activities was meeting some of these ferrets. The handler, James, got two of the ferrets out. One was on a lead for the kids to walk and the other one was crawling around inside his jacket, this definitely made Sophie laugh!
Another of the scheduled activities was feeding the calves. I had a go at this because Sophie was a bit too small and it was great. They were so small and so hungry!
We also went to visit the small animals in the small animal barn. There were bunnies and guinea pigs which you could hold. Sophie loved petting the rabbits, they were so soft!
The last thing we did was visit the pigs, because this was near the end of the day and they were ready for their dinner, they were getting quite excited. One pig jumped up so that its front feet were on the wall. The kids thought this was hilarious!
Overall we had a great day, I would definitely reccomend this as a day out for families with young kids as there are plently of activities to keep you entertanied for the day. There were pony rides for kids over two and scheduled tractor rides all day. There is also a large indoor play barn with soft play and an oudoor playground. They had an indoor sandpit for the kids to go in next to the goat barn, and also an outdoor track for the ride on John Deere tractors.
If you are interested in visiting Umberslade for a day out visit: http://www.umberslade.com/index.php
** All opinions are my own