"How covid-19 has affected us" - Bucks Goat Centre owner Ruth Gaisford describes how the centre is coping through these difficult times

Today, Ruth Gaisford, owner of the Bucks Goat Centre explains how the farm is coping with the new situation, and what life during lockdown is like.

As the owner of the Bucks Goat Centre I can share that these are very difficult times for us.

What would have been our busiest time of year, with visitor numbers being at there highest, it has now become a very sad and troubled time.

As with our fellow animal attractions in the Vale, we cannot just shut up shop, our animals still need feeding and caring for.

We have seen a change in our animal’s behaviours as they begin to miss the human interaction they are so used to.

Some of the smaller animals have been taken home by staff so they and staff can have comfort with one another. All but one of the staff here at the BGC has been furloughed, leaving farm manger Anthony and myself, with my family’s help, keeping up daily animal care.

Though we have applied for a Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan these are taking too long to be released.

We have also applied for Government grants but with so many businesses applying it concerns us that we will not be awarded enough to cover losses.

We have set up a Go Fund Me page, which we have had over £1000 donated by our followers.

This has been amazing, and we are so very grateful for all the support we are getting.

We are posting out daily videos and pictures of our animals, running weekly quizzes and doing virtual tours from our Facebook Page

Once lockdown is over, we hope that people will come back to visits us.

Though as there have been no government guidelines on how the transition back to normality will look like its difficult to start making plans.

Social distancing will still need to be in place so we are guessing that we will only be allowed a certain number of visitors on the farm at one time.

We would like to take this opportunity to say a big thank you to all our visitors that have donate funds and followed us on Facebook, it's helped keep our spirits up and helped our animals greatly.

We hope everyone is keeping well and safe and look forward to seeing visitors back at the BGC very soon.