All you need to know about feeding the lambs and meeting the Easter bunny at Chester House Estate this Spring

With a record number of cade lambs at the Chester House Estate this Spring, it’s time to hop on over and have some Easter fun!

The team at the heritage site in Irchester have gone bigger and better for 2024.

Their first Spring event back in 2022 saw 40 cade lambs – an orphaned lamb – housed and looked after in lamb barn for the Easter season.

But this year they have welcomed more cade lambs than ever, in addition to ewes and goats that are housed in a new marquee named The Lamb Shed.

As well as bottle feeding the lambs, visitors can take on the giant Spring hunt and for the first time meet the Easter bunny.

The Northants Telegraph was invited along to feed the lambs and we couldn’t wait!

We took two little helpers with us – they loved meeting Bertie the Easter bunny as well as making origami rabbits before heading into The Lamb Shed for the main attraction.

After the team explained about the cade lambs and how to stay safe around them, including using hand sanitiser and stepping into the foot dip, we headed in and were greeted with a lot of bleating!

Our two-year-old clearly loved this as she spent the rest of the time bleating back at the lambs.

The five-year-old was a bit nervous at first but quickly got the hang of it with the bottle and loved watching the lambs vie for his attention.

Feeding the lambs was a real joy and will be recounted back at school for this week’s Show and Tell!

Next up was the Spring hunt around the estate – the kids loved searching for the clues and were even more excited about the egg-stra special prize at the end of it.

Bertie the Easter bunny was on hand to present the prizes and stop for a quick selfie before restocking his basket for the next set of visitors.

Asking our two little reviewers what they enjoyed about the Spring event, the five-year-old very succinctly said ‘everything.’

And the two-year-old was very, very happy with her haul of chocolate eggs after making friends with the lambs.

The Spring event is a lovely treat for the Easter holidays and it certainly got the thumbs up from our young reviewers!

Facts about cade lambs

A cade lamb is an orphaned lamb.

They aren’t cared for by ewes and so they need to be hand-reared by humans to survive.

Cade lambs are bottle-fed with milk formula to mimic their mother’s milk.

At around 12 weeks, the lambs head back to the farmer and into their grass fields.

The important information

Visitors to the Chester House Estate will be able to visit, feed the lambs and chat to the estate’s livestock team from Friday, March 29 to Sunday, April 14 (2024).

This year’s event will allow visitors to explore the 85-acre estate while undertaking the Spring hunt, searching for 14 Spring-themed objects to crack the special Easter code.

You will also get to meet the Easter bunny and have a go at some Spring-themed origami – this is all included in the price of the Spring passport.

The Spring passport costs £15 per child and free for accompanying adults.

You will be able to arrive either in the morning or afternoon slot, this is for admission only and all tickets run until 4pm.

When you arrive, head to outside the Haybarn, located in the central Farmyard, to collect your passport.

You will be given a time slot for your cade lamb bottle feeding – this activity runs every half an hour but a time slot must be booked.

Parking is free – visitors should use the Claudius Way car park for this event (use postcode NN8 2DH to find this entrance).

The Lime Avenue car park is for disabled and accessible parking only (for the disabled car park, use postcode NN29 7EZ).

For further details about the Spring event or to book tickets click here.

Chester House Estate is overseen by North Northants Council and opened to the public in October 2021 following an extensive £17m National Lottery Heritage funded restoration project.