Doonies Farm To Close

Some of the wonderful friendly animals at Doonies rare breed farm.

Doonies Farm Aberdeen is a rare breeds farm and model farm at the village of Cove just outside Torry, Aberdeen. Doonies Farm is the home to the largest collection of rare breeds of sheep, goats and cows within Scotland and works with the Rare Breed Survival Trust (RBST) to preserve many rare breeds such as the Gloucester and White Park cow and bull. Doonies Farm in Aberdeen breed their own livestock to either keep at the farm or sell throughout the United Kingdom so that farmers can continue to breed from the rare stock.
Doonies farm offers a rare hand’s on experience for children, and if visiting at the right time of the day children get to bottle feed calves and sheep as well as helping the friendly staff feed the other animals.
The real life experience offered to visitors, young and old is something that is becoming rarer in these times of computer games and consoles.
Doonies farm is one of the last bastions of what life is really like in rural Scotland that is accessible to the public. What Doonies offers cannot be measured in monetary terms, the delight in children’s faces as they get to meet close up animals that they may have only previously seen in books or on the television is priceless.
So it is with a sense of disbelief and anger that I write this on the day that Aberdeen Council has announced that Doonies will close as part of a £30 million cost cutting exercise. Doonies has been hit along with other vital services and sports facilities.
Remembering that this is from the council that has spent £30 million on consultants over the last three years, and that this is the council that is planning to spend hundreds of thousands building traveller sites, and almost £2 million on English classes for none English speaking children who have newly arrived in the UK.
The Councils priorities seem not to be with local tax payers who should expect the same level of services and facilities that previous generations have enjoyed. Failure to provide this rests fully at the council’s door, and they should perhaps look in-house for the savings that are required. Because as it stands at the moment they have failed the citizens of Aberdeen. You can read about the planned closures here.