Livestock management<\/p>\n
The yard area has an outer ring of paddocks where the cows, sheep, and horses are cross-grazed. <\/p>\n
This also assists with reducing parasite loads on the pasture.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the old-fashioned way, animals are rotated and then we harrow the paddock. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t have to collect dung as it all gets broken up and goes back into the land.\u201d<\/p>\n
About 6ha of grass silage and conventional hay bales (for easier management) are grown on the land annually.<\/p>\n
This is sufficient to feed the animals in winter or summer drought. <\/p>\n
The inner paddocks house the goats, donkeys, pigs and baby animals that aren\u2019t with a mother.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe get in lambs and calves each season so children can bottle feed baby animals.\u201d<\/p>\n
An old cowshed on the property provides the perfect sheltered area for the house pets. <\/p>\n
Visitors get to cuddle guinea pigs and rabbits and watch the antics of mice, chinchillas, rats, bearded dragons, water dragons and the blue-tongued lizard.<\/p>\n
Breeding and feeding<\/p>\n
Week-old lambs in the shed. Photo \/ Catherine Fry<\/p>\n
\u201cWe allow selective breeding so that people can experience seeing babies with their mother. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe have five breeding ewes and Nala, our speckled park cow. <\/p>\n
\u201cRed, our bull, has sired some of our cows.\u201d<\/p>\n
You can\u2019t move around the farm without an entourage of ducks and chickens. <\/p>\n
While their breeding isn\u2019t thwarted, eggs are collected daily, so it is rare for anything to hatch.<\/p>\n
Amber with their Flemish Giant rabbit, Lenny. Photo \/ Catherine Fry<\/p>\n
Care is taken with prolific breeders such as rabbits, mice, rats and guinea pigs, keeping males and females separate unless babies are wanted.<\/p>\n
Rick and his daughter, Katie, do most of the work on the farm. <\/p>\n
Keeping the pet animal cages clean takes a considerable amount of work each week.<\/p>\n
Children Sophie and Jake, and Amber and her parents all muck in on open days. <\/p>\n
When pony rides are on, it\u2019s labour-intensive for safety reasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe grazing animals eat the pasture and home-grown supplement feed. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe horses do require more specialised feed, but we have found a pretty universal pellet that a lot of the animals can be hand-fed by visitors.\u201d<\/p>\n
Amber feeding Halcyon Hills Sir Totara, the pure-bred red poll bull, aka Red. Photo \/ Catherine Fry<\/p>\n
The pet animals enjoy greens from a local greengrocer, and the pigs eat the other vege scraps. <\/p>\n
Amber said Red the bull loved eating bananas.<\/p>\n
Wheelbarrows and buckets of appropriate feed are stationed around the farm walk so visitors can hand-feed the animals themselves.<\/p>\n
Red the bull will meekly take silage from over the fence. <\/p>\n
Amber hastened to add that even if they don\u2019t go in with him at close quarters, \u201cat the end of the day, he\u2019s a bull and precautions are needed\u201d.<\/p>\n
With home section sizes getting smaller and smaller, Amber said it was getting harder for children to be exposed to pet and farm animals.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s such a pleasure to see the excitement on the children\u2019s faces when they actually get a close-up encounter with an animal they\u2019ve only previously seen in a picture or on TV. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt really makes the hard work worthwhile.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Livestock management The yard area has an outer ring of paddocks where the cows, sheep, and horses are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59635,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[34368,28119,50,13500,4749,651,11586,1887,49239,2109,3233,49244,11424,2082,49240,78,13458,49243,1899,2882,49242,130,111,43,139,69,90,2680,49238,49241,223,165,61,810],"class_list":["post-59634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-amber","tag-amp","tag-animals","tag-catherine","tag-childrens","tag-close","tag-coast","tag-countrys","tag-enjoy","tag-family","tag-farm","tag-farmyard","tag-finds","tag-for","tag-haup","tag-in","tag-inspired","tag-kaipaki","tag-kids","tag-love","tag-millen","tag-more","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-opens","tag-petting","tag-rick","tag-the","tag-their","tag-to","tag-up"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}