Learn · About farm animals

The animals behind the choices

Seven species live at Sage Mountain, and every one of them arrived by a route that started with a person. This page is about the animals as animals: how they end up at a sanctuary, and what most people never get to learn about them.

How animals end up here

Six ways an animal comes to live here

Every animal here came to be here by one of six routes, and nearly all of them run through a person who decided to make a call. These are the ways it happens, and who came each way.

Youth livestock programs

Kids in 4-H and FFA raise a calf or a goat for months, and at the end of the season the animal is sold at auction. Sometimes a bond forms along the way and a family goes looking for a different ending.

Came this way: Star, Bradley, Benji, Pam, Bruce, Louis

Strays and animal control

A pig wandering a neighborhood, a cow loose on a county road, a goose dropped at the city shelter. When nobody claims a farm animal after the hold period, the shelter has few options, and that's usually when the phone rings.

Came this way: Morgan, Reba, Ralphy, Roxy, Penelope, Sally, Walter, James Pond

Backyard flocks

Backyard hens are easy to start and hard to keep for a decade, and the calls come for a few different reasons. Some hens have simply stopped laying: a hen lays for a few years and lives for many more, and not everyone wants to keep one who has stopped. Some are roosters nobody expected: chicks are sold before anyone can tell a hen from a rooster, and most cities don't allow roosters once they crow. And some are the birds left behind when a caretaker moves, gets sick, or loses the rest of the flock to a coyote, and they need somewhere to go together.

Came this way: Abigail, Delhi, Rosaline, Ezekiel, Wednesday, Hei Hei

Found alone, far too young

Lambs and chicks turn up on roadsides, in canyons, and high in the mountains, days or weeks old. Someone finds them, bottle-feeds them through the first stretch, then looks for a place where they can grow up.

Came this way: Sammie, Jesse, Martin, Ava, Peter, Brett, Jeff Goldblum, Ariana Grande

Passed along by other rescues

The sanctuary is one stop in a network. Farm Sanctuary, Wasatch Wanderers, Haven Hollow, and DxE have each pulled animals out of situations we would never have heard about, then called when those animals needed a permanent home.

Came this way: Jane Goosal, Dale, Ponyboy, Jasper, Moby, Phoenix, Geese Witherspoon, Ryan Goosling, Stephen Honking

Born here

Twice, an animal arrived already expecting. Harriet gave birth to four piglets two months after her rescue, and Reba's calf surprised everyone six months in. They are the only residents who have never known anything but the sanctuary.

Came this way: Francis, Pickles, Amora, Francine, River

Every animal above is here because the sanctuary had room for them when the call came. Right now it is at capacity, and sponsoring a resident is what keeps their care funded for as long as they live.