It was a busy start to the day this morning, I took Meg & Gracie out for an early morning walk as usual. After breakfast, and with the dogs hard fast asleep on the settee, we headed down the motorway to the outskirts of Barnsley, a forty-five minutes’ drive from home, to have a look around Canon Hall Farm. This is a family run working farm, (open from 10.00am till 6pm every day except Christmas day,) and visitor attraction on the foothills of the Pennines, It is a place I have been wanting to visit for several years now since it started to appear on Television. 

Prior to our arrival I had to book our entrance tickets online, which involved creating a ‘passport account’, this then allowed me to manage the booking online. We also had to book our arrival time slot online when we made the original booking, which was all very straight forward.

From our arrival in the car park, the staff were very welcoming and friendly. On leaving the car we headed down the slope to the well-stocked ‘Farm shop’, we popped into the for a good look around, making a note of some items to purchase before we leave later in the day. Leaving the farm shop, we headed to the farm entrance, on arrival we showed our ticket reference number to the receptionist and headed outside. Our first port of call was a visit to the Reptile House, where we looked at some impressive animals including several huge snakes, boggle eyed chameleons, impressive iguanas, some scary looking frogs, armoured turtles and tortoises and huge insects. Above our head was a specially designed walkway for an army of leaf cutter ants who were busily harvesting leaves, we watched them as they carried segments of leaves above their heads to the colony centre. On leaving the Reptile House, we made our way over to have a look at the Meerkats in their outdoor enclosure, before walking around the corner to the ‘Farmyard’ which consists of a series of barns, which give the visitor a good insight into modern farming. All the barns are undercover and have a purpose-built viewing platform above the animals, which runs around three sides of the barn and enables you to have a really good look at all the animals below. Most of the barns had an animal food vending type machine which dispense a small bag of animal food, this can be emptied into a specially designed shoot which delivers the food to the animals feeding trough below.

The first two barns we entered where the ‘pig breeding/farrowing barns’ where you could watch the mother pig and her freshly born piglets in their pens, all the piglets were busily suckling on their mother. Each sow can have between twelve to thirteen piglets each, weighing between two to three pounds each at birth. By the time these little piglets have grown to thirteen to fourteen pounds in weight at about three weeks of age they are weaned from their parent and placed into nursery pens where they are housed with other piglets from various litters. The barns have specialized temperature controls and ventilation to help support the health of the piglets, which are fed a specially formulated corn and soymeal diet. After about two to three months, they leave the nursery pens, when they weigh between fifty to sixty pounds. It was a good and fascinating insight into the life cycle of these beautiful animals. My time wandering through the pig units took me back to my youth when I would work on my uncle’s pig farm during the school holidays. I still have a soft spot for tiny piglets. 

After reluctantly leaving the pig barns behind us we entered the ‘Mixed animal barns’, here there was a fine mix of woolly and short coated animals, namely various breeds of sheep, Llamas, Goats, Donkeys, Alpacas, Shetland Ponies and Shire horses, each breed in spacious sized pens with lots of sumptuous bedding. It was especially fascinating watching the goats, in particular the young ones as they looked full of mischief.

There looked to be many pens with Rare Breed Sheep in, I could make out the Jacob sheep but will have to have another visit within a week or so and pay more attention to the other breeds.

Of particular cuteness in this barn this morning was the Highland Cattle. In one pen was ‘Lady’ who had given birth to two bull calves earlier this year, called ‘Robert’ and ‘Bruce’, born on 20th February 2024, so today they were just a month old. At the other end of the barn was another Highland mother called ‘Hetty’ with a white Heffer calf which was born on Boxing day 2023, so today was just three months old, we do not often see a white Highland calf so today was quite a treat. 

On leaving the barns we headed over to the ‘Roundhouse’ where the pregnant sheep are put to have their lambs, but today it was swarming with several school groups, so will have a look on our next visit.  Next door to the Roundhouse is the ‘Red Squirrell enclosure’, though after looking for five minutes we couldn’t see any so decided to head over to the ‘Hungry Llama’ restaurant for a very pleasant brunch before the journey home.

It was easy to see why Cannon Hall Farm is officially the best family day out in Yorkshire after being named Best Large Visitor Attraction in the White Rose Awards, we will certainly be back for another visit.