biggest_dreamer
Well-Known Member
This privately owned facility just outside of Gainesville, FL exists on the owners' property, and has a surprising number of rare cats (and relatives) for this sort of place. These include a striped hyena, jungle cats, Geoffroy's cats, and the only rusty spotted cats in the western hemisphere. It seems that they may also be tied for keeping the largest number of feline species in the country. They offer an open house twice annually (which I missed by just a week, bummer), but for the rest of the year they offer two-hour guided walking tours around the facility on Saturday mornings. This tour takes you on a figure-8 loop around the property, stopping at the majority of the enclosures so that the guide can offer a few pieces of trivia about the species and explain the individuals' origins, and so that tour-takers can ask about the animal's age and weight and how when where and why they make sex every single time.
The animal enclosures aren't anything amazing, but I also don't think they're really that bad, considering they're just literally wood and wire thrown up on these folks' property. All of the animals seemed to have more or less sufficient space (more than I've seen them afforded in some lower-end AZA facilities, for what that's worth!), and there was certainly an effort to provide enrichment for them. Between the enclosures and the genuine-sounding back stories ascribed to the big cats, I certainly didn't get the impression a tiger mill was running just outside of view or anything.
Before scheduling my visit, I contacted via facility to confirm that the four species I had previously mentioned (striped hyena, jungle cat, Geoffroy's cat, rusty spotted cat) would be visible on the tour. I was met with a "yes, but jungle cat does not like people." I'm not sure if this was simply incorrect or if something changed with the layout or tour route before myvisit, but it turned out that the jungle cat(s?) are actually kept elsewhere and are not in the standard tour.
All that said, here's the species list in the rough order that they were encountered on my tour. I'll be noting species kept in multiple enclosures each time we saw them (most of the cats are kept solitary), with one exception: there are spotted hyenas everywhere here. Every time you turn the corner, there's a new spotted hyena or two visible in the distance. I wanted to ask why there were so many spotted hyenas, particularly when the tour guide was very up front about how many of each large feline they keep, but I also wasn't sure I'd like the answer so I just left it dangling. Anyway there were way too many of them for me to recall where all they were so I'll only list the nearby ones.
Italics are signed but not seen, asterisk are stopping points for the tour. Yeah, some visible animals did not get stopped for, and some no-shows still got the full tour treatment. I'll also denote the sexes of the animals in each enclosure when known.
Entrance
This area is actually not part of the tour, but there are a small handful of enclosures to view while driving into the property or waiting for the tour to begin.
Free-roaming
Nothing special here, but I'll include this list for completeness's sake
The animal enclosures aren't anything amazing, but I also don't think they're really that bad, considering they're just literally wood and wire thrown up on these folks' property. All of the animals seemed to have more or less sufficient space (more than I've seen them afforded in some lower-end AZA facilities, for what that's worth!), and there was certainly an effort to provide enrichment for them. Between the enclosures and the genuine-sounding back stories ascribed to the big cats, I certainly didn't get the impression a tiger mill was running just outside of view or anything.
Before scheduling my visit, I contacted via facility to confirm that the four species I had previously mentioned (striped hyena, jungle cat, Geoffroy's cat, rusty spotted cat) would be visible on the tour. I was met with a "yes, but jungle cat does not like people." I'm not sure if this was simply incorrect or if something changed with the layout or tour route before myvisit, but it turned out that the jungle cat(s?) are actually kept elsewhere and are not in the standard tour.
All that said, here's the species list in the rough order that they were encountered on my tour. I'll be noting species kept in multiple enclosures each time we saw them (most of the cats are kept solitary), with one exception: there are spotted hyenas everywhere here. Every time you turn the corner, there's a new spotted hyena or two visible in the distance. I wanted to ask why there were so many spotted hyenas, particularly when the tour guide was very up front about how many of each large feline they keep, but I also wasn't sure I'd like the answer so I just left it dangling. Anyway there were way too many of them for me to recall where all they were so I'll only list the nearby ones.
Italics are signed but not seen, asterisk are stopping points for the tour. Yeah, some visible animals did not get stopped for, and some no-shows still got the full tour treatment. I'll also denote the sexes of the animals in each enclosure when known.
Entrance
This area is actually not part of the tour, but there are a small handful of enclosures to view while driving into the property or waiting for the tour to begin.
- Domestic horse
- Spotted hyena
- Red-ruffed lemur
- Laughing kookaburra
- Green-cheeked conure
- Kunekune pig (0.1.2) *
- Kunekune pig (1.0), domestic goat, sitatunga *
- "Bengal" tiger (1.1, white male, golden tabby female) *
- Lion (0.1) *
- Red river hog (1.1) *
- Striped hyena (1.0) *
- Serval
- Caracal
- Cougar (1.0) *
- Cougar (0.1) *
- Generic tiger (0.1) *
- Generic tiger (1.0) *
- Generic tiger (0.1) *
- Spotted hyena (1.1) *
- African spurred tortoise *
- Cheetah (0.1) *
- Black-backed jackal
- Jaguar (1.0, black) *
- Jaguar (0.1) *
- Amur leopard (0.1) *
- Silvery-cheeked hornbill *
- Warthog (1.1) *
- Tayra *
- Geoffroy's cat
- Rusty spotted cat (1.0)
- Black and white ruffed lemur *
- Red ruffed lemur *
- Ring-tailed lemur *
- Fishing cat
- Caracal *
- Clouded leopard (1.1)
- Siberian lynx
- North American river otter *
- Bat-eared fox *
- Linnaeus's two-toed sloth *
- Clouded leopard (1.0)
Free-roaming
Nothing special here, but I'll include this list for completeness's sake
- Domestic dog
- Domestic cat
- Domestic chicken
- Domestic duck
- Peafowl
