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Thank you for letting me know. I would also like to let you know that your magazine is very popular with our students. Many of the students at this school are from a rural farming background and it has been fantastic to have some reading material that appeals to them, particularly the more reluctant readers.
Mrs Kathryn Durkan, LRC Manager, John Port School
John Port School, Derbyshire
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Why I'd never run a children's farm
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Why I'd never run a children's farm | |
Children become ill on a fairly regular basis after a visit to the farm. Last September it was E Coli, and it had a huge effect on the farm business as well as the children who contracted the disease. I'd never run a children's farm becasue the risks are just too high. You have no control over the children who visit, so know nothing about their susceptibility to common farm diseases like E Coli. Maybe the time has come for farmers to go back to proper farming, and let children learn about the industry at arm's length.
Farming always makes the headlines when visiting children get severely ill. Before the breakdown in Sept 2009, Godstone Farm was apparently entertaining up to 2,000 people a day over the school holidays, which, at a total spend per child of maybe £8, makes the job a good earner. There are, however, a great many costs over and above those of running an ordinary farm.
Apart from the cost of swings, slides, climbing frames, climb on tractors and trains, mazes, basket swings, zip slides, tobaggon runs there are the necessary huge variety of animals - rare breed (commercials won't do) cows and pigs, poultry and ponies, chipmunks, donkeys, guinea pigs and llamas.
There are tearooms, shops, toilets, kiosks, and dedicated tractors and trailers to take visitors for rides. The whole operation needs supervising and this means minimum wage staff with all the problems of commitment, skills and ability.
On top of this the business needs insuring, for a huge premium, plus a substantial marketing budget to get the punters in.
The whole exercise means that the family farm is transformed to being something entirely different to a farm. It becomes an exercise of people skills combined with the difficulty and unpredictability of livestock farming. If your herd of 200 cows or flock of 400 ewes can get on top of you, have pity on the man with a managerie.
Not only are the animals an unknown quantity, the punters are as well. Your marketing will attract families living in totally sanitised environments, with no experience of dirt. Children who have zilch resistance to the kind of disease which our farm kids just shrug off. You'll have 'Worried-Well' parents on the look-out for problems and others out to make a claim.
Overlayed on all this is the spectre of disease such as the E.Coli at Godstone farm which has put 10 children 'seriously ill' in hospital, 36 confirmed cases announced on Sept 14 - and a comment from the ubiquitous Professor Hugh Pennington (one of Britain's leading microbiologists) that the consequences of the bug can be catastrophic. Yet he said he was unable to pin-point the cause or sorce of the infection. If he finds it difficult, after the event, how much harder for the farmer to introduce the right kind of protection for all visitors.
Distressed parents have gone through hell with very sick children in hospital, and up to 20,000 others, unaffected so far, have had cause to worry.
So what's the children's farm all about?
The educational value is entirely limited to 'touchy-feely'. It's partly a substitute for a family pet, which for many families where all are out at work and school is impossible. So animal contact introduces a whole new range of bugs to people whose metabolism has no experience of them. The dangers of disease are hard to control, particularly if even the experts say it's a puzzle.The alternative to animals is providing mechanical adventures, such as roller-coasters and other rides. These require detailed maintenance, but if the initial design is correct, and supervision is strictly enforced, the dangers are contained and calculable. Accidents involve a limited number of people.
Operators of childrens farms have some difficult hurdles ahead. Ideally, they will want to separate visitors from animals, yet this is a major part of their marketing effort:
Here are some excerpts from childrens farm websites: - We offer animal petting / handling - Activities vary according to the season and may include duck, pig or chicken feeding, sheep milking, lamb feeding, animal handing ( where children are encouraged to stroke the cockerel, hen and baby chicks ) - the children (even the youngest) are encouraged to climb in with some of the smaller animals and to hold young chicks and to stroke the baby rabbits.
Not only is this a Major Selling Point, considerable investment in buildings and facilities have been made to enhance the handling experience.
So you'll never find me having anything to do with a children's farm. I don't think the experience of eyeballing a llama at the age of six has much if anything to do with later life. If life is maximising ooo's an aaahs there are other ways of doing it that don't involve complex micro-biology.
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