Hi guys,

We thought that we would start a blog from the animal team for you. Our hope is that this will keep you all updated on the exciting developments taking place within the zoo and farm. We also thought it would be a good opportunity to tell you about what goes on behind the scenes at the zoo and chat about topics that are close to the keeper’s hearts such as conservation, education and individual animals.

We’ll dive straight in with some exciting news about some new additions to the farm, over the past year we have begun to focus on what animals we keep on our farm, farms have been a essential part of British history for millennia and over the centuries though methods such as selective breeding we have developed some amazing breeds that fulfil a variety of functions. Sadly many of our oldest native breeds are in decline; according to the UK national breed inventory for 2020 approximately 80% of our native live stock breeds are faced with extinction. For this reason we have decided to focus on starting to keep native rare breeds on our farm.

We started this last November with the addition of four Bagot goats; these have settled in well and recently given birth (more updates to come in a future blog) however we are excited to announce that we have recently acquired three Aylesbury ducks and three Dorking chickens from Mudshute farm on the isle of dogs, both these breeds are at risk of extinction, we will update you on their progress and the breeds history in future blogs.

Thank you for reading; we will try to keep the blog updates fairly regular and will be doing videos on our social media pages with updates on the animals, we look forward to seeing you around the park over the summer holidays.

Ben Anderson

Zoo Manger

18/07/2023