Behind the scenes of White Post Farm, Farnsfield

Her day starts at 8.15am with the feeding of the animals checking them over.

Freya’s first job of the afternoon was to clean the enclosure of crossbreed horse Holly and cheeky Shetland pony Charlie.

Freya starting working at White Post at 17 at weekends and then returned after university.

After removing mud from Holly and Charlie’s hooves to prevent laminitis, we followed her into the main barn to meet alpaca’s Eddie and Alfie.

Although slightly nervous by our arrival, Eddie and Alfie were remained inquisitive as Freya handed them their favourite snack ­— carrot.

“I love all the animals that we work with, but you do have your favourites,” she said.

“One of my favourites is Noel the donkey, he’s like Eeyore and I just think he’s so funny. He doesn’t like being fussed or anything but I’ll always give him a fuss.

“I’m a big fan of the wallabies and I’ll never get tired of giving them treats.”

After re-stocking our treat supply, which had been donated by the local Co-op, we headed over to meet eight of the farm’s most eligible bachelors.

The gang of wallabies, headed by Jasper the albino, are clearly favourites among staff, volunteers and the public alike.

As we fed them their afternoon treat of cabbage, Freya informed us of their hidden, and rather stinky, talent.

“They are the best trumpers ever. They trump all the time,” she laughed.

“We never get bored of giving the wallabies food. Sometimes they sit with their tails in between their legs which is quite funny.

“They’re normally pretty chill because there’s nothing to compete for. When they do have a bit of a scuffle, Jasper is normally involved in it.”

After saying goodbye to Freya, we made our way over to the petshop to meet Katie Hays, whose responsibilities range from helping take care of animals in the field, to looking after animals for sale in the pet shop and answering customer phone calls.

She said: “Today I’m working in the pet shop. I sometimes work up at the farm feeding them and cleaning them up, but today I’m here.

“We have rabbits, Guinea pigs, hamsters and gerbils and they’re all for sale. We’ve got to make sure that while they’re here, their life is really nice as well. We need to make sure that their houses are nice and clean, sometimes that’s a full clean and sometimes that’s a spot clean.

“Rabbits are litter trained which is amazing, but Guinea pigs aren’t litter trained so they make a lot of mess.

“As well as looking after the animals obviously we sell them so we’ve got customers coming in the shop.

“We also sell food, we sell treats and we offer a pet hotel service as well so that when people go on their holidays, they can bring their pets on holiday here.”

Katie often works with students who come to White Post for work experience.

“They help me out cleaning and things or sometimes they just want to learn how to handle or do health checks to make sure our animals are nice and healthy,” she said.

We finished the day with reptile yard keeper Thomas in the reptile house and his passion for the creatures soon became apparent.

While giving them they afternoon snack of locusts, he said: “I enjoy absolutely everything about the job. I love connecting with the animals, I’m more of a reptile advocate but I absolutely love the wallabies.”

Thomas also does regular health checks on the reptiles, keeping an eye out for cysts and mites that may harm them.

Despite it being marginally quieter in the winter months, White Post Farm is the perfect day out for anyone of any age.

It’s open from Friday to Sunday throughout January, so put on your warmest coat and head down there.