As guests who have visited Rural Roosts may already know, we have a herd of Hereford cattle. We have slowly been increasing the herd and now (including the calves) have around 70 cattle on the farm. We have had a total of 12 calves born during this winter so far, 6 cows are still due to calve Feb / March time. Guests can walk to the shed where the youngest calves are being kept out the cold with their mothers, the cows due to calve are also kept in the shed at the moment so we can keep a close eye on them.

The calving season has gone pretty well so far, we had one set of twins early on, mostly the cows just have one calf. With eager help from our children, we had to hand rear one calf as its mother was unable to feed her, we named her ‘Twinkle’! She took to the bottle quickly, we then got her drinking out a bucket and she soon started to nibble some food and hay too. Eventually she weaned herself off the milk and we were able to move her (in the little trailer you can see in the photo above) to the big shed where she now enjoys playing with the rest of the calves. She always come for a fuss when we are in the shed, here is a guest who recently uploaded a selfie onto our website gallery page, of Twinkle giving her a quick kiss!

As the weather improves we have been able to let some of the cattle out, its lovely to see them out in the sunshine.

We rent some of our grazing land to a local farmer with sheep. The flock of 200 are now in lamb, so will be returning to their home farm for the lambing period, then hopefully some will return when they are old enough – its always lovely to see the sheep around the farm.

We have lots of farm walks for our holiday guests to use whilst staying in the lodges, so people can enjoy seeing the farm animals as well as all the wildlife around the lodges and surrounding farmland on their walks.

For families wanting to explore a bit further afield, we are less than a 10 minute drive to Rand Farm Park – a great day out to see a huge range of animals, plus indoor and outdoor play equipment to enjoy whatever your age! Over the February half term you can maybe see some lambs being born at Rand Farm and enjoy helping with the bottle feeding. We are also very close to Woodside Wildlife Park with its huge tropical paradise and lots of animals ranging from racoons to reptiles, wolves to cheeky monkeys (to name but a few!).

Guests can upload their favourite photos of their time spent at Rural Roosts onto our website Gallery page, its a great place for viewing photos of what our guests see and  have enjoyed during their holiday. We hold an annual competition, the best photo is selected and the winner receives a lovely hamper of Lincolnshire goodies delivered straight to their door. We are in the process of selecting this years winner, so will keep you posted as to who it will be!

Rural Roosts is a great place to come to relish in the beautiful Lincolnshire countryside and the great outdoors, so if you haven’t already booked for your self catering pine lodge break this year, please don’t delay – click the link and check out our availability on the Rural Roosts website. You can also email me katie@ruralroosts.co.uk if you have any questions or queries. We do hope you will be able to join us for a holiday here at Rural Roosts soon!