Coming up with names for newborns can be pretty hard, especially if you have half a dozen newborns in one year. No, I am not personally responsible for all of those newborns but when you have a farm stay with a lot of different animals you end with a lot of newborns in the space of a short period of time. And they all need names.
Each year at Diamond Forest Farm Stay we have two alpaca crias, one jersey calf, anywhere between one and six lambs, turkey chicks, peacock chicks and ducklings born on the farm. Coming up with names for all of them can be really hard. With over 100 different animals on the farm it can be hard not to double up, it can be difficult to find a name that is unique and memorable and finding a name that will suit the animal can strain the brain.
So a couple of years ago we came up with a plan. Whenever we have an animal that is due to have a baby within the next few days we tell the families as they check in that they need to keep a watch out and see if they can spot the new baby. Whoever spots the new baby first and comes up to the reception office to let us know gets to name the baby.
The benefits of this scheme are three fold. Firstly we leave all the hard thinking about what to name the newborn to someone else; secondly everybody on the farm is keeping a close eye on our pregnant mum so we usually know that it’s all happening straight away; and third, kids – and adults – get a real kick out of getting a chance to actually
name one of our animals.
Another benefit of having our guests come up with a name for our newborns is that we get a real variety of names; some interesting, some unique and kids will always surprise us. No matter how outlandish a name that our guest’s come up with, we stick with it.
Here’s a few examples: We have
- A jersey calf called Princess Leia (from Star Wars)
- An alpaca cria called Bolt (short for Lightning Bolt because he is bright white like a flash of lightning) and one called Ben
- A turkey called Grahame and one called Max
- Sheep called Cheryl, Serena, Blossom, Bart, Mulberry, Boss, Max, Jack, Bella, and Milly
- A ram called MR T (from the A Team)
- Rabbits called Pepper and Nutmeg
- A chicken called Elsie
- Goats called Houdini (which suits him rather well because he rarely stays in his own paddock) Jimmy, Nigel and Uther
- A peacock called Flynn
- A pony called Sally
- A cow called Bambi
- A donkey called J.R – short for Just Right
- A bull called Nugget
Little Jack being bottle fed.
You get the idea….
So next time you come to stay with us, there just may be a newborn on the way and it could be your turn to come up with a name for a new little one. So put your thinking caps on, we need all the help we can get when it comes to naming our animals.