http://www.hillviewanimalpark.co.uk/

Hillview Animal Park, Alloa (2025)

31/01/2025

Elvis will soon be leaving the building 😥

Elvis has been at Hillview for a few weeks now, and we are hopeful that for the second year in a row, he has done his job!

We can't wait to see the results in the late spring/early summer!

30/01/2025

Little lamb is growing well!

Our Somali lamb has got life off to a great start. She has found her feet and following mum for constant milk.

She has almost doubled in size and has grown in confidence.

We are really looking forward to watching her grow up!

25/01/2025

🌬️ STORM DAMAGE 🍃

Unfortunately we suffered some damage to shelters and fences in yesterday's storm. However, we are happy to report that all our animals are ok, which is the most important thing.

Our local area still doesn't have power, but we are hoping to be back to normal tomorrow, so we can begin to repair the site.

23/01/2025

🔴💨⚠️ Weather warning⚠️💨🔴

Due to tomorrow's red weather warning for severe wind, we have cancelled our home education club tomorrow.

Batten down the hatches and stay safe!!

22/01/2025

Home education club!

The older age group session was back in action on Tuesday. The guys did a great job cleaning the stalls in the barn, and they enjoyed meeting the new Somali lamb!

A great team effort to see to all of the animals on a chilly morning!

19/01/2025

A mixed morning.

Unfortunately after our update about our bottle fed Somali sheep lamb last night seemingly doing well, we woke up to feed it it's first bottle of the day and unfortunately he had passed away.

The frustration of this was soon relieved a little when we discovered 'Boo' another one of our Somali ewes had given birth during the night to a healthy big lamb.

We watched it feeding itself, so fingers crossed this one will be more successful!

18/01/2025

A messy dinner time!

Our little Somali lamb is continuing to improve, and his appetite is growing with every feed!

It doesn't take him long to get milk everywhere when he is keen to get hold of the bottle teat but hasn't quite got the coordination just yet!

Hopefully he continues in this direction over the coming days!

17/01/2025

Enquiry update!

Today we have received a HUGE amount of requests for information on our home Educators club.

It's great to see that it has been so well received and in our first week we have had lots of very happy and enthusiastic youngsters coming in and spending time with us.

We just wanted to let those that have contacted us know that we will be sending out information via email tomorrow.

If you are interested, but haven't yet contacted us, please drop us a message with your email address and we will send over more info!

Thanks again!
🐏🐐🦌🦘🦙🐓🦚🦢

17/01/2025

Home Education Club!

Today was our first session for our younger home Educators.

We were so busy that we only managed to grab a couple of photos!

The group got on incredibly well feeding, watering and cleaning the animals. They also learnt about vitamins and supplements that were given to some of our animals today, and also about bottle feeding!

Everyone had a fun time, and the weather held up too which was great!

15/01/2025

Home Education Club!

Yesterday our first Home Education club session got off to a flyer!

Lots of general animal husbandry tasks were carried out, including pushing a new bale of straw into the donkeys!

Everyone got on very well and really enjoyed themselves.

We are looking forward to holding our second group on Friday and meeting more of our club members!

14/01/2025

🌏One of the smallest lambs in the world!?🌏

One of our Somali sheep gave birth to her first ever lamb this morning, and in true fashion, she didn't want anything to do with it!!

He is absolutely tiny, weighing in at just 1.3kg

Today we have given him Colostrum and warmed him up to bring a bit of life back into him.

He is only a few hours old, and certainly isn't out of the woods yet, but we will do our best to try and help him pull through.

10/01/2025

‼️We have multiple beavers‼️

Yesterday we went through around 1500 photos from our camera traps from over the last 12 days.

To our absolute delight, we have a confirmed family of European beavers.
The photo captured on a camera trap below is of 2 kits from this year.
We have also captured at least 1 adult at the same location.

Initially we thought that the population at this site may have been 1 or 2 younger individuals that had moved in and began to make this area their home, but after seeing the extent of the work they have done and the size of the lodge, we were waiting patiently to get the photos we needed to confirm the breeding population!

You can see in the second photo, the size of the tail of the adult (and the width of its body!).
Beavers put on a lot of weight to get them through the winter, but this could also be a female that is pregnant, as they will give birth in the next couple of months.

Very exciting news, and we will continue to monitor closely to see if we can confirm numbers and then hopefully in the coming months, young beaver kits once they have left the lodge!

09/01/2025

The donkeys were very happy with a new bale in the ring feeder earlier in the week!

They get just as much on the floor as what they eat, but it makes a nice big fluffy bed for them to lay in whilst they are eating!

Our donkeys eat more than any other animals that we have and go through a big round bake of straw everywhere single week 😮

It's a good job we love Xena, Iris and Malachi a lot!!

09/01/2025

‼️Camera trap excitement‼️

After yesterday's news of 2 European Lynx being spotted in the cairngorms, and the announcement this morning that they had been safely captured, we thought we should check our cameras to make sure there weren't any left behind!

To our amazement, a whole family of Lynx were caught on camera this morning, using the beaver dam as a highway across the water.

We presume these have escaped prior to being wrapped for Christmas presents for the local teenage boys!

They've been on the run for a while, but seem to be doing well!

Stay vigilant in the West Fife area, and if you smell the sweet smell of Africa, then calmly turn around and walk away!

Well done to the team at Highland Wildlife Park and if we need a hand catching these ones, we will give you a shout!

02/01/2025

Another species caught!

On one of our Beaver Cams, we have caught a Pine Marten!

What is really exciting about this image is that the Pine Marten is using one of the beaver dams as a bridge to cross the water course.

In the first image what you can see is the back end and tail of the Pine Marten running past (away from) the camera.

In the second image taken (2 seconds after), the Pine Marten turns back around on the bank, and it's eye reflection can be seen in the photo.

This is great to see how the beavers are benefitting other species, and to see the kind of eco system that the beavers have built.

01/01/2025

Our first 2025 wildlife monitoring project is in action!!

Within a 5 mile radius of Hillview Animal Park we have such a vast amount of wildlife. Various habitats that support a huge eco system and countless species of flora and fauna.

One of the most secretive of those species, which has become quite an iconic species across the UK, is the European Beaver.

We are being assisted by some of the team from West Fife Woodlands and are monitoring 1 area with cameras and surveying another where a breeding population is thought to be moving into.

European beavers were hunted to extinction in the 16th century. In May 2009 the first beavers were released back into Scotland in Knapdale Forest.

The benefits that beavers have on the local eco system is very positive, creating habitats for many other species.

We plan on monitoring the activity at this site, recording numbers of individuals, breeding success and following any movements into other waterways in the area. We will also be recording other species caught on camera and seen on site, to show how they encourage other wildlife in the habits they create.

We have multiple cameras dotted around the areas, all cameras that belong to us are tracked (internal chip) and also have our details on or inside the cameras. We know where our cameras are, they are well secured, and we can monitor them remotely.

If you are lucky enough to know where these beavers are living, please do not disclose this information publicly. Beavers are shy animals and there are plenty of people that do not like them (for uneducated reasons), which will put them in danger of persecution.

For now, we will leave you with this image, our first clear image of a beaver on camera trap, taken 2 nights ago.
The beaver had previously climbed up its dam to explore the higher part of the water course, spent an hour in that area, and they returned to the main body of water where it's lodge is located.

Judging by the size of this beaver and the size of its tail, we are quite sure that it is a young beaver from earlier this year.

We are really excited with this project and our first images that we can share with you.

We will do regular posts to keep you updated with information on the beavers on our doorstep!

31/12/2024

A happy new year from Hillview!

In our first full year, we would like to thank everyone that has supported us!

The local community has been great, and we have had visitors from all across the central belt.

2025 is going to be a busy year for us, and we have lots of pre-booked events, clubs and open days planned, along with some new enclosures being built.

As well as our animals, we will continue to support our native wildlife as much as possible, starting with the first monitoring project of the year which we will tell you more about tomorrow!

We hope for your continued support in 2025 from those near and far.

So for now, it's a happy new year from us!

29/12/2024

Native species monitoring for 2025 ready to go!

We are dedicating some of our time in 2025 to monitoring native wildlife, both on site and in our surrounding area.

We have camera traps that we will be locating at various places over the course of the year, but initially our main focus will be on a REALLY EXCITING project.

At this point we aren't going to give anything away, but once our cameras are giving us back the images we are going for, we will share them with you!

Hillview Animal Park

31/01/2025

30/01/2025

25/01/2025

23/01/2025

22/01/2025

19/01/2025

18/01/2025

17/01/2025

17/01/2025

15/01/2025

14/01/2025

10/01/2025

09/01/2025

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02/01/2025

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31/12/2024

29/12/2024

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