New Arrivals at Spring Time

Spring is always a joyful month in the animal calendar, but it has been an equally exciting month for us all here at Coombe Mill, as we finally opened our doors to a full house of new guests during the week of April 12th.

New Animals through the farm

Our sheep herd has continued to grow in size. Our final Spring arrivals being born at the end of the month, totalling three girls and two boys. All our ewes have been exceptional mummies, looking after and caring for their lambs.

April has been an exciting month for our ‘feathered friends’ too. Our female goose has been busy making a cosy nest for her clutch of ten eggs and has spent the last thirty days sitting on her nest. We are keeping everything crossed that at least some of these eggs will hatch and produce a few goslings. We have two females and one male Bronze Turkey. They have also been busy producing over twenty-five eggs between them. Similarly, we are hoping that a week after our goslings are due, we may have some baby poults too.

One of our most popular Spring arrivals, has been our two baby guinea-pigs. They have been enjoying some quiet time with Mum, before being introduced to our now very large family of 17 guinea-pigs. Our younger guests have thoroughly enjoyed handling and feeding these two youngsters.

Spring arrivals in the form of frog spawn, has also been multiplying in our two fishing lakes, where the children have been amazed at the ever increasing numbers of tadpoles and their progressive increase in size and shape.

Fishing at coombe Mill

Alongside a river keeper, we have been working hard cutting and pruning back a lot of the overgrown trees, shrubs and brambles. This has enabled us to create three ‘swims’ for our budding fisherman and guests to come and fish. The carp being another Spring arrival, have now started to surface a lot more as the temperatures have slowly risen. They are gradually growing in size due to their diet of dog biscuits provided by our friendly fisherman recently.

Trout and juvenile Salmon can now be spotted along our river. We pulled on our wellies and jumped into the river to make some new river pools. A salmon pool is where salmon are known to gather to rest and feed, and from where they can be successfully caught. In England, they are known as stells.

Guests Enjoying the longer evenings

Overall, it has been lovely to see our guests enjoying all the animals on the farm. They are also taking advantage of both our indoor and outdoor barbecue areas and all the outdoor play areas too. We are very much looking forward to being allowed to open our new indoor games room on May 21st too.

We are now fully booked for July and Aug but do have some availability in September.

Anya and Emma xx