Of the several Nikolai animal sets this one is most reminiscent of the Airfix Farm Stock set. The sheep and pigs are very similar to that set, although the dogs are different, and the birds are unique to Nikolai. While the Airfix set is by no means bad the animals here are better produced. More attention to fine detail gives these models the edge, although both sets are identical in size and would mix perfectly happily together.

As we have come to expect, the sculpting is excellent. Resin is not a strong material so very thin items such as legs must be treated carefully, but Nikolai have resisted the temptation to make these thicker to make them more robust. All the brown bases you see above were added by us to facilitate their painting as Nikolai do not provide any, but the birds are provided on one long strip of resin which could be cut up and used as a base. Indeed there is little real alternative as these tiny models will require considerable care to be removed from this strip. While the sheep, pigs and dogs are very nice the birds are so small it takes a good eye to make out much on them, let alone paint them. Each is only 5mm in length, yet amazingly all 18 of them seem to be in different poses, although admittedly the range of possible poses is very small for a bird. The great dioramas are the ones with plenty of detail, but it will take a dedicated modeller to paint and display these tiny things. Still, if that is what you want then these are excellent models.

The Airfix set represents better value per animal, and provides a much wider variety too, but has long been out of production and is very hard to find today. If you are just looking for models of the animals in this set then you really couldn’t do any better than making a purchase from Nikolai – a purchase which will reward you with some very attractive models.