Animal Care Lead

Animal care activities include feeding the pasture animals, performing health and safety checks on them, and herding them to different pastures. You will need to be comfortable with animals as small as a few ounces (50 grams) to over 1600 pounds (725 kilograms). While all of the animals are sweet, it is imperative to handle them appropriately for their safety as well as your own. A few of the animals have been domesticated from the wild, so they appreciate a commanding presence whilst in their space.

Feeding

We feed the dogs once in the morning and the cows and jack donkey three times per day. All other animals are fed twice a day between 7 and 8 AM, and one hour before sunset (5 PM in the winter to 7 PM in the summer). Feeding can take about an hour, but we welcome you to spend more time with the animals, interacting with them, cuddling them, performing health checks, and cleaning their feed and water troughs and bedding.

Health Checks

It is easier to keep an animal healthy than to restore their health. Health checks include (but are not limited to) checking that they come for their feeding, monitoring each animal's gait, trimming the hooves of the smaller ruminants, checking for anemia, administering medicine and dewormer medication, and performing fecal analysis.

Safety Checks

Part of ensuring an animal's health is making sure they live in a safe environment. You can improve the safety of these animals by walking the fenceline of each pasture to inspect gaps between the ground and the fence, removing obstacles and obstructions along the fence and within each pasture, clearing electric fencelines from weeds and other objects that could short them, checking for construction material that could injure them, and making sure that no animals from outside the sanctuary come in and ensuring the sanctuary animals do not escape.

There is no alcohol, drugs, tobacco, or consumption of animal products at the sanctuary. This policy is strictly enforced. What you do outside of the sanctuary is your business, but please do not arrive inebriated, intoxicated, or otherwise disruptive.

Visitors have told us that our sanctuary has a special feel to it. There is a calm on the land and with the animals that they find remarkable. Please contribute to this calm environment through kind actions and words.

We want our sanctuary to be an opportunity for you to learn and explore ways of treating the land, and the plants, animals and people that call it home. If you would like to experiment with growing food or caring for animals, please clear your plans with the onsite manager. Thank you for being considerate.

• Visitors must be accompanied by trained staff when visiting the animals. Although the animals are sweet and loving, for their safety and yours you must have someone familiar with their personality while interacting with them.
• Visitors must listen to and comply with all instructions of the trained staff member.
• Do not feed the animals fruit, vegetables or bread. Good health is already a challenge in our wet climate. The sugar from fruit and vegetables in seemingly nutritious snacks will negatively impact several species of animals' hooves. Contrary to popular actions, bread is very bad for bird health. If you want to feed the animals, come during feeding hours and give them their staple of feed.