Longdown Activity Farm near Ashurst (formerly Longdown Dairy Farm) is as much a family attraction as a working farm. There are a plethora of friendly looking (if a little smelly) farm animals that children are encouraged to stroke, feed and pet.
A list of some of the activities are (taken from the website):
- Bottle-feeding calves
- Bottle-feeding goat kids
- Baby animal encounters
- Large goat feeding
- Porky’s picnic time
- Tractor and trailer rides
- Duck feeding
Kids between 8 and 14 can also sign up to be a ‘farmer for a day’. As the website states: this might include cleaning out pig sties, grooming ponies or mixing goat feed. In fact, doing whatever the real farmer has to do.
The cost is about £40 per head – sounds like a pretty good business model to me!
Just down the road is the New Forest Wildlife Park (formerly the New Forest Otter, Owl and Wildlife Park), so it might be a good idea (if a little expensive) to combine the two into one day trip.
Website: www.longdownfarm.co.uk