Hillview Animal Park, its owners, and friendly animals

Hillview Animal Park is located at Bogside, just off the A907 between Blairhall and Clackmannanshire.

Run by husband-and-wife team, Craig and Kirsty Holmes, the pair have a combined 35 years of experience between them in working with animals.

One of the park's peacocks. (Image: Alexandra Baff) They run open days for the public to come along to their farm and see their many animals, which includes alpacas, wallabies, peacocks, and more.

Craig, who is originally from the Isle of Wight, spoke about how Hillview Animal Park came to be.

“Since I was 14, I’ve worked in zoos, so 25 years in the industry almost. I moved up to Scotland about 12 years ago now, and we bought this place nine or 10 years ago because we wanted our own kind of smallholding.

“When we started building it, we built it deliberately the way we have so we can have open days and host groups and things.

One of the park's young kids. (Image: Alexandra Baff) “It’s not a working farm as such, although we do plan going forward to become accredited with the Rare Breeds Survival Trust, as a conservation facility for native rare breed farm stock.

“I had just done it for a long time and got to the point where I wanted to do it myself, instead of working for other people.”

READ MORE: Animal park near Alloa welcomes newborn alpaca to its herd

Kirsty helps out on the park’s open days and is responsible for all of their admin work. The couple also have two daughters who are growing up surrounded by animals.

One of the park's alpacas enjoying the sunshine. (Image: Alexandra Baff) Craig added: “We’ve got two young girls so they’re quite often here on open days.

“They’re living the life that me and Kirsty wanted when we were younger, but because it’s normal for them they just take it for granted.

“They like all animals, they’re living our dream, they like it but they don’t realise how kind of lucky they are if that makes sense.”

Their oldest daughter can even remember when her parents reared one of their Somali sheep, Coco, in their home, after she was born too weak to stand up and feed.

Some of the Cameroon sheep. (Image: Alexandra Baff) Coco made good progress and was later reintroduced to the rest of the flock.

Visitors who want to come along to Hillview on one of their open days have to pre-book, but that allows them to visit and see the animals up close.

They have also held special events in the past including lamb bottle feeding and pumpkin patch visits; the latter of which they will be holding again in October.

“What we find is people aren’t thinking about Halloween, summer has just finished, but then a couple of weeks before it just goes mad.

The park's animals are all really friendly. (Image: Alexandra Baff) READ MORE: Hillview Animal Park manager hand-raises lamb

“All the big pumpkin patches fill up and then all the custom kind of spills over to the smaller ones and that’s when we sell out our sessions, although we’ve sold out, I think probably half a dozen sessions already.

“It’s an American thing. The story of pumpkin patches is that there was an American farmer that was supplying one of the big supermarket chains in America and he was getting people basically going to his farm and asking if they could buy pumpkins.

“Over a few years, that just got bigger and bigger. He started selling them just at the end of the farm and it got to the point where he had that many people coming and buying pumpkins that he stopped supplying the supermarket, and started a pumpkin patch where people could pick their own.

Visitors should pre-book to attend one of the park's open days. (Image: Alexandra Baff) “I think there were a couple of farm parks that went to a big conference over in America, like American farm attractions, and then the idea just slowly came over here and has taken off.” Craig added.

Tickets for their upcoming Pumpkin Patch slots can be purchased online at Eventbrite.

As well as getting visitors from Fife and Clackmannanshire, the farm attracts people from further afield too.

The farm's alpacas. (Image: Alexandra Baff) Craig commented: “People quite often say they’ve come in from Edinburgh and Glasgow direction.

“Word of mouth is kind of spreading a bit further afield, and obviously we’re very small, but if people are just wanting to get out of the house for a couple of hours it’s perfect for that.

“I think because we’re so cheap to get into in comparison to some of the bigger places that cost a fortune, it’s just really affordable for everyone.”