Start a Small Farm or Petting Zoo
Having a garden, and/or pets is something a person may do for their own enjoyment, but a petting zoo or small farm is a business venture meant to be shared, usually for a price, with other people.
Here are some ideas to incorporate into starting your own small farm or petting zoo.
Steps
- Purchase, lease, or rent a piece of land suitable for you purposes. In general, it should be zoned (if local regulations require it) for business or agricultural use. It needs to be suitable and large enough to meet your needs.
- Plan your project. You will need to consider several things while planning your farm or zoo, here are a few:
- Plan the way you will use your space. For instance, a petting zoo will require areas for animals to be fed, bathed, sheltered in inclement weather, and displayed to interact with the public.
- Plan crops you will plant that you can harvest for sale if you choose to operate a small farm. Vegetables, nursery items like container grown flowers or seedling trees or shrubs are examples.
- Plan your schedule of operations. If you are in an area with a tourist seasons, you will need to be able to operate your business when you expect traffic to bring customers to you.
- Plan financial resources to allow you to survive while you establish you business, and to pay the expenses involved in the beginning, buying animals, equipment, seeds, and other products you will need.
- Make plans to get help managing and operating your farm or zoo. Finding a partner or partners may be more practical than hiring people if you have limited resources.
- Look at legal requirements for your new business. You will need special insurance for liability if you have public access to your premises, and you may also have to have a business license and even professional licenses to operate depending on local regulations.
- Begin small if necessary. A small garden, for instance, can produce an incredible amount of long growing season vegetables like tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, beans, and others, where crops like grain, melons, and other single harvest items only produce for a short time during their respective season.
- Look at what the public in your area would want to spend money on. If you are in business, either farming or operating a petting zoo, you will want to provide the public with things they want. Petting zoos typically have cute, tame, and docile animals like sheep, goats, pigs, ponies, and the like. Avoid aggressive species, and very large animals like cows and horses unless you are capable of handling them safely.
- Build your facilities. You will need pens for a zoo, with welcoming features, walkways, bathroom facilities, parking, and possibly a souvenir shop. For a small farm, you will need storage for harvested crops, processing space, display space for selling, and the actual cropland itself.
Tips
- Pet areas must be kept neat and clear with emergency washing stations and disinfectants.
- Diversity is the key to survival. Having an on site gift shop that offers books and other pet or farm related items can always help support the farm.
- Plastic buckets or large icing containers make great feed buckets for kids to carry around.
- Always look for alternate sources for food and grain for your farm animals.
- Starting a farm or petting zoo is a business venture that will require a great investment of time and money.
- Contact knowable pet handlers to offer seminars and demonstrations.
- Many grain, wheat or hay farms have leftover supplies, which can help support your business.
- Ask Grocery stores and seed suppliers if they can donate any supplies towards your effort.
- Often farms or petting zoo's may need "hidden support" in that the farm may need guard dogs, electric fencing and other warning devices to protect smaller animals from flying or ground predators.
Warnings
- Limit small children in area with non destructive pets and should always be under constant supervision by an adult or zoo handler.
- Petting zoos may require proper insurance and coverage in order to operate the business as well as cover cost, loss, damages or personal injury.
- Post warning and liability signs in plain sight for all parties.
- Any business venture is risky.
Things You'll Need
- Land suitable to your project.
- Investors or resources of your own.
- Knowledgeable help.
- Volunteers or Summer interns
- Seed, Grain & Other suitable feed for a verity of animals.
- Golf carts or ATVs with attachments for towing or hauling small farm items.
- Watering pits (Troughs) and garden hoses for cleaning and watering the small animals.
