Colin Deppen of Spotlight PA wrote the story.
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Sandy and Linda Then have a lot of mouths to feed. Among them are the pot-bellied pigs, the Nigerian dwarf goats, the Jersey steer, the robust Clydesdale, and eight domestic pets.
A busy animal shelter and rescue, Barking Tree Farm is a four-acre site in Centre County that was moved from Vermont a few years ago.
I informed PA Local over the phone when my wife and I moved down here [to be nearer to relatives] and took all the animals with us. Without them, I was not going anywhere.
She truly can’t now. Animal caregivers and farmers don’t simply up and go. It is determined by maintenance and feeding regimens. However, there are moments when life outside the homestead calls.
After all, farmers also have to deal with disasters like the time the big Clydesdale shattered Sandy’s leg, as well as weddings and travel.
When the animals are gone, who is keeping an eye on them? Here come farm sitters, experts who are employed to monitor the property through frequent check-ins or 24-hour stays.
The vast majority of Pennsylvania’s tens of thousands of farms are family-run.
The majority of sitters do not work on commercial farms because general liability policies typically include a livestock exclusion, according to Beth Stultz-Hairston, president of Pet Sitters International, despite the fact that their industry is expanding quickly.
With around 4,000 members, including about 200 in Pennsylvania, Pet Sitters International positions itself as the largest educational association for related businesses worldwide.
According to Stultz-Hairston, 25% of Pennsylvania members stated they care for horses, and 40% of members said they care for cattle, both of which are marginally higher than the membership average. (How many service commercial versus nonprofit clientele, such as Barking Tree, is uncertain.)
With few peers when she began, Deanne George of Dee’s Farm and Pet Sitting in Palmerton, Carbon County, has been doing this work for ten years.
The idea was that you would create your own schedule. She stated, “You can be more adaptable, never imagining how life would change once word got out.”
Her clientele is diverse and all live within 20 miles of Palmerton. Homesteaders, hobby farms, horse stables, and even apiaries can be found in the region.
Although the calls are busy over the holidays, they often increase in the summer.
George recalled that over a week in June of last year, we conducted fourteen drop-in visits between farms and small animals. That is not something I advise. We were overburdened and even had to decline work because there was no other option.
A barn in Pennsylvania’s Centre County.For Spotlight PA, Georgianna Sutherland
Each client has a different workload. While some have thirty horses, others just have one.
George’s pricing are determined by needs and location.
This becomes relevant if a lot of medication is being taken. Although I don’t charge for travel or anything, I could spend a single day in Northampton, Lehigh, Carbon, and Monroe counties. She has been employed for a maximum of two weeks.
After retiring from a 30-year career with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Joanna Taylor founded Mountain Pets, a farm and pet-sitting business in Port Matilda, Centre County. She cared for endangered birds throughout her first eight years at the organization.
I’m assisting other owners by drawing on my professional and personal expertise with farm animals. “Because finding someone with experience is really difficult,” Taylor remarked.
Owners may have asked family members or an informed neighbor for recommendations before hiring farm sitters. Because of the industry’s high overhead, which might make additional expenses difficult to afford, some people still do this.
Depending on the scale and complexity of an operation, Taylor’s job can take hours each day for each client. She charges $50 per hour. Monkeys are owned by at least one of her clients.
According to Taylor, working on a farm will never take you precisely one hour and fifteen minutes each time. Every day is a new experience. Someone isn’t where they should be, something breaks, and you have to spend time repairing and putting things back together.
A sick animal is the worst-case situation. Veterinarians and emergency contacts are pre-identified, and animals are watched for warning indications of problems that the typical non-farm person might miss, such as horse colic symptoms.
According to Taylor, things with horses can quickly go wrong.
Farm sitters are not naive. First, Taylor conducts a meet and greet. Additionally, she has clients complete papers that provide them a road map and comprehensive instructions for their animals, including which ones are irascible vs outright clinging, and which ones must be fed together and which cannot.
According to Linda Then, she initially employed Taylor to cover the farm during Penn State home games after discovering her through a poster at the nearby ZenPet business.
However, Taylor immediately became vital while Linda was incapacitated by a spell of back trouble while Sandy was recuperating from her broken leg.
Linda recounted, “You know, we were still limping around, trying our best to take care of the indoor animals.” Joanna would go off and take care of other customers before returning to serve us in the evening. That helped us get through a really difficult period, and it lasted for a few weeks.
Before Taylor finishes, Linda pauses, briefly distracted by a delivery of hay that caused a flurry of animal noises on her end of the line: She was a blessing.
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