Lucky Ladd Farms

We took our two-​year and three-​year old the other day, along with my wife and sister-​in-​law. The farm parts are great; the animals to see and feed and the games and playground and fun things to do are great. If that was everything, I would give them 5 stars.
It was the staff, and particularly the food service staff and what they sold for food that tarnished an otherwise wonderful experience. I went fully expecting the food to be sub-​par and overpriced, but I was still a little disappointed to have all of these expectations and more confirmed. It wasn’t even good tasting junk food, it was gross. From the super low-​end hot dogs in stale buns (that are more than two bucks each) to the lemonade that they fill so full of ice that you only get enough actual lemonade for a few sips. They take things from «we don’t allow outside food in so you have to buy our expensive crap» to actively trying to skimp on everything to squeeze every penny out of their customers. In addition, the staff was excruciatingly slow to do anything. At the food place near the back the whole staff was talking loudly with each other how they wished it would rain harder so all the customers would go away (while I’m standing right there). The lady then proceeded to use her bare, unwashed hands, to cram as much ice into a cup as possible to limit the amount of lemonade I could get, despite my saying many times to not put so much ice in. They get a few points for taking credit cards, but they lose those points again for caring more about ten pennies than a good customer experience. If you buy their seven buck «barrel» of lemonade, it says you can refill it for one buck. They don’t take cards for anything less than 5 bucks, and then they don’t include the sales tax on that dollar, so it’s really a buck ten, which is really annoying in a day and age where people don’t carry around change.
What’s more, we were accosted constantly by bees while eating. I’m not talking a few, I’m talking «can’t even take a bite without swatting away 10 bees.» It’s a good thing my kids aren’t allergic to bees. I realize it’s a farm and outside, but there are ways to keep bees away from designated eating areas. If they care so much about customer safety, why wouldn’t bees be on that list? Certainly, a decent number of customers and children are seriously allergic to bees.
The bottom line is that if we go back, we will plan ahead. We’ll bring our own food to eat in their picnic area outside the gates, either before or after we play. We’ll avoid their staff and food service locations entirely. The sad thing is, I was prepared to spend way to much to feed my family that day and if they would have made it a pleasant experience, the food being over-​priced wouldn’t have been an issue. For goodness’ sake, use better quality food, try to at least made customer feel a little bit like they aren’t being gouged, and include the tax in the price of the refill so I can just give you a dollar and be done with it. And teach your employees how to actually interact with customers well and create a good experience!

Have fun waiting in line forever for EVERYTHING! There are completely inefficient at selling admission, selling food, conducting rides, etc. Its been years since I’ve been here for that very reason and reluctantly came back today… nothing has changed. Save yourself the headache and take your kids to the zoo.

The best place to visit ever!!! It’s been months and I still think back on our time there fondly. One of my most favorite days with the family yet! Animals, food, foam pit, splash pad, rides, slides, more animals and lots of activities. Can’t wait to go back there. Get here now!

Awesome fun place for the kids. Water area is basic and small, but there are many other play areas outside of the petting area (although they are not always staffed and some rides are only open when staffed).

Wonderful place! Fun for the whole family, the staff is incredible, the grounds are gorgeous, and the food in the concession stand is yummy!

I’m from the country but, not country (if you know what I mean) so when my 3 year son kept asking to go the farm like I was like ehhh this will be exciting. So my husband, my sugar lumps, and I take the 45 minute drive to Lucky Ladd’s Farm and much to my surprise it was the best thing I’ve experienced in a long time! I’m already thinking of presenting this at church for an youth event. My son was not ready to leave and actually cried on the way back to the car. It was a mix of the zoo and the fair all gathered in one place! Hope to see you again soon!!!

Fun place to go with the whole family. Our favorite feature is the animals. You can feed the animals and there is also small petting zoo area. They have wagon rides and lots of things for kids to play on and with. Schools go here for field trips. We love to go here.

Fun day with the family. Lots of animals and activities, particularly suited for younger children.

Great place for the whole family! We visited Saturday with my 6 year old and 3 year old, and both were crying when we had to leave. Always know it’s a win if this happens! We stayed for nearly 4 ½ hours! This place has so much to do you cannot do it all.
What’s there? Let’s see… A huge Corn Maze, the best petting zoo and animals hands down, including chickens, roosters, goats, pigs, alpacas, llamas, cows, ponies, donkeys, bunnies, pigeons, peacocks, doves, and I am pretty sure a yak or some crazy cow breed I have never seen before! My kids loved feeding them all, and you also can go inside the petting area and brush their hair. My daughter loved this, she even picked a little nanny goat up and held it like a baby!
For the adventurous kiddos, they have so many play areas, including tire swings, obstacle tire climbs that even 10 – 12 year olds will find challenging, pipe swings, and a huge tire mountain. Not done! Add to that a sand area with the digger toys that you actually steer, a full playground with tunnels, and three of the highest potato sack slides around!
This year they had added some new things: pony rides for $ 5, mining for gold which looked great but we ran out of time, a balloon man, and my husband’s favorite part was a pumpkin sling shot and corn shooter! Pretty fun even for grown ups!
The cons: the hay ride is pretty lame and the concessions are VERY slow, I would advise taking your own food. The drinks were really reasonable ($ 1 – 2) and they had homemade lemonade and the homemade Kettle Corn and it was all fantastic, $ 4.99 for a huge bag of KC and it was legit, still warm. Other than that, a no on the food. I would have packed our lunch. There are NO healthy options at all, I mean nothing! My husband is crazy healthy and he had to eat a plain baked potato! Ha. No chicken of any kind, just chili dogs, beef, and Frito pie. Gag. So if you are healthy, you better take some snacks! ;)
They did take debit cards/​cc at the front and you could pay for everything this way! Thank goodness they aren’t in the Stone Age. At the end of your day, you can even get some ice cream on the way out! They have Blue Bell on site! Happy Fall!

I love a good family day at Lucky Ladds. It’s a little bit of a hike so plan to make a day out of it and look for special events on their site. They have a massive petting zoo and we all enjoy the potato sack slides. They also have a cute little store with snacks, plenty of restrooms, and hand washing stations. It’s a wonderful place to make memories.

My family and I spent five hours here on a Saturday and still did not get to do everything. We loved it and would have stayed longer if it was not closing. We’ll certainly be back. (We actually bought a season pass.)
We had been looking for a year-​round family-​themed farm — in other words, a «pumpkin farm» that is open during the spring, summer and fall — and Lucky Ladd (I think) is the only one in Middle Tennessee that is like that and open to the public.
We really enjoy Honeysuckle Hill Farm, and still do, but Lucky Ladd does have more attractions.
The petting zoo was amazing (they even have llamas!). The slides were wonderful. My son wanted some pedal rides, and they have those. He wanted those «mini-​diggers,» and they had those. There are lots of things to do for small ones (1-​, 2– and 3– year-​olds).
It’s educational, too. The tractor ride (free with admission) takes you through a forest where you’re introduced to the various animals of Tennessee (the animals are not real but wooden cutouts, but there’s a CD track that plays through speakers and tells you about each animal). There’s a water mill where you can dig for fossils and gems ($ 5 a bag, but your kids will learn how the gold diggers of California did it, or how paleontologists work, using a screen-​bottom pan).
There’s also a free tractor «barrel» ride for kids. And there are pony rides ($ 5, but free for members).
There are lots of picnic tables, plenty of swings, and a nice little pond with ducks. There’s also a hiking trail that goes into the forest, although we didn’t have time to do that.
And there’s a concessions stand. Prices were reasonable (members get 10 percent off).
As you may have read, there aren’t restrooms with plumbing. I thought that was going to be a deal-​breaker for me, but the port-​a-​potties did smell nice, and the attractions overshadowed the lack of real restrooms.
My tip: Come and plan to stay for the day. If you don’t want to spend $ 20 or more for food for the family, bring a cooler with food and drinks. Treat it like the zoo. (The prices are far, far more reasonable than the Nashville Zoo.) There’s PLENTY to do for free if you don’t want to spend anything but the admission price. (It’s $ 10 per person. Consider the membership if you live fairly close.)
I really hope this place succeeds being opened year-​round. It’s wonderful for a family with small kids.

We took my 2 ½ year old here for the day and loved it! We’ve gone to Honeysuckle Hill the last few years and this place puts it to shame. Easy to find with ample parking, we arrived shortly after opening. There was a line, but it moved quickly. We first checked out the visiting fire truck which my son loved. From there we went to feed the animals. We had bought a bag of food when we bought our tickets so we were ready to go. The animals were welled cared for, gentle, and super friendly. There was signage to tell guests which animals to feed and information cards about the animals throughout. There were machines to buy feed if you didn’t get it at arrival (or needed more) and staff around to give you change if you needed it.
We moved past the petting zoo area and there was so much more to do! There were activities set up for kids of all ages, and my son had a blast. He rode the ponies (which had an extra fee of $ 5), enjoyed the slides, toddler area, corn box, sand box, «popcorn» area (balls for kids to sit and bounce on), duck races… the list goes on and we even skipped a bunch of stuff. He loved he big slides on the hill the most! From here we moved onto the hay ride, which had no hay, it was just benches on a bed attached to a trailer, but fun just the same, the 20 minute ride took you through the woods where there were wooden animals set up. The ride was narrated with information about these animals and their existence in Tennessee. We skipped the corn maze since we had the little man, but it was large and looked like fun!
There are also tons of areas set up throughout for pictures. While he a no bathrooms with plumbing, there are ample porta-​johns around that were very clean. I saw them being maintained throughout the day. Portable sinks and hand sanitizer were also available. Pumpkins were available and reasonably priced. Wagon rentals are available for $ 5. The only real issues we ran into all day was to he concession lines were long and very very slow.
Overall, this was a fantastic place! We had a great day and will definitely visit again!

I went thinking «I’m 39, I’m driving an hour down Nolensville Pike to go to a petting zoo, I wish I had pre-​gamed this.» By the end of our journey, me and my friends shut the farm down and were talking a return trip. It was freaking fun.
The drive down was rather uneventful — Google Navigation got me to within half a block of the place and claimed it was on the other side of the road, however the large field of cars parked on the right of the road and reasonably sized sign got me into the right place with no problem.
The thing started with all of us trying to figure out how much cash we had on hand and realizing that the closest ATM was probably about 8 miles from there. We decided we had enough cash to get in and then realized they take Visa, Mastercard, and American Express.
The animals were friendly, loved being fed, petted, etc. You can walk in with some goats if you want to and there’s an attendant, or play with Rosie the rather loud minipig. Tons of disco chickens, peacocks, and rather tired golden retrievers litter the place along with goats, rabbits, peahens, and a cat who the person working claimed was named Lucky and was antisocial (his purring and attention whoring made me believe she was quite mistaken)
When a group of mid-​twenties — thirtysomethings hit a playground, well that was amazing. People taking videos going down hill slides, strobe flashlights through tunnel slides, etc. We slid, climbed, and rode everything we reasonably could and it was fun. Nobody broke anything.
Took a hay ride, it was ok but eh… little slow. Realized this was not the Haunted Hayride which we took later and although still a little slow was more fun as we got to see some really amazingly carved pumpkins. Also, they didn’t jump out and scare us, but their pre-​ride notice that they were not going to jump out and scare us put everyone on edge. It was quite amusing.
We went in the corn field maze after dark and wandered around with flashlights and armed with the knowledge that with several college grads and cell phone technology we probably were not going to starve or die. One of our party realized he had lost his phone and when we called it it had already been found and returned to the main building.
«Hey, this is Bob’s phone, he lost it.» «it’s in the main building, are you on the farm?» «yes, we’re in the corn maze right now» «if you survive, it’s at the front register.»
We all thought this was a pretty cool place in which you could lose a phone in a corn maze and it would be found and returned before you got out of the maze.
I’m sure there’re reasons I should not like this place, but the animals seemed happy, the place had the cleanest port-​a-​johns you’ve ever run across — all who used them seriously said they were immaculate — the one I used was clean, smelled of carrot cake, and was disturbingly unused-​looking. I mean clean…
Caramel apples were great, the kettle corn was particularly amazing. We shut the place down.
The only issue I had was leaving after dark in the country is kind of nerve wracking. It’s dark out there, real dark. Just memorize where the hard turn is and you’ll be fine — otherwise you might end up going straight and into someone’s half-​mile-​long driveway.
Man, if I were a kid I don’t think I could have enjoyed that place any more. One bit of advice to vegetarians though, plan to eat elsewhere. The only veggie options won’t help you much.

My husband and I went out there this morning because I really wanted to see the goats. I really wasn’t sure what to expect, I had just gone to the website and since it’s so well done I figured that was a good sign.
Right away the teenagers working the parking lot were super friendly & didn’t seem bored by their jobs. There’s plenty of parking. Then we walked up and just seeing what was in the vicinity was impressive. You could buy $ 1 bags of feed for the animals and they also had feed stations in the feeding/​petting zoo part if you use quarters.
There were a lot more animals than I was expecting. It did my animal-​loving heart well to see that the animals looked good, cared for and seemed happy. They were friendly and definitely liked the food! The main section you feed the animals though a fence. Then there’s a separate pen where you can go in (sans food) to pet some more animals. The girl working that gate was explaining stuff about the different animals in there, it was cool.
Then we left the petting/​feeding area and holy crap there’s so much more! Slides, a corn box (like a sandbox but with corn), this tube seesaw thing, corn cannons, and way more that I can’t remember. Without kids we had a blast so if you have kids it’s even better for them! There’s definitely plenty of opportunity for parents and kids to enjoy activities together, it’s not just a kids area or anything. Both of us played games against each other that are set up and he bought this $ 5 bag of gemstones and then used it to «mine» for them in this running water thing they had set up, which was pretty cool actually!
Everything was clean (I was a bit worried about there being a smell and my allergies acting up but I didn’t notice a «petting zoo» smell and my allergies did fine out there), the staff were really friendly and didn’t seem bored/​annoyed having to be at work (I even saw some helping a kid ride the seesaw-​like thing b/​c he was really the only one on it at that point and was too small to get it going), and it’s really well laid out and spacious so it didn’t feel crowded.
We spent a little over 2 hours out there, I bet if we had kids it would have been longer. Definitely worth the drive if you’re going from Nashville and the price of admission is definitely good for all the stuff they have inside. Glad we took a chance and went out there!

When fall finally swings around after the summer heat you MUST grab the kids and visit Lucky Ladd Farms. Located in Eagleville TN (midway between Murfreesboro and Franklin), Amy & Jason Ladd have built a fabulous and affordable family destination.
The Farm features all kinds of activities including: a sorghum maze, pumpkin patch, hay ride, petting zoo, slides and jungle gyms, corn shucking, a learning center, and other fun activities. Pack a lunch or grab something from the snack bar. We went on a sunny Sunday afternoon and despite the fact that there were loads of families already there, we easily found parking space a didn’t have to wait in hardly any lines.
Tip: Remember to take some extra quarters for the animal feed in the petting zoo.