Johnson City Exotic Zoo

Just before Thanksgiving we headed out to Johnson City Exotic Zoo.  Just a day trip but about an hours drive from Round Rock and some interesting animals here and also some interesting ways to interact.

We arrived around lunch time and paid the money to get in.  An extra that is offered when you pay your money is the ability to buy a feed bucket.  The bucket is enormous but you need it!  The person on reception gave us one instruction – do not take the feed bucket into the animal petting zoo.  We did not do this at first but we understood right away why that was the case.  We had to go through the reception and out to the petting zoo whilst we waited on the tour of the main enclosure.  We only had 15-20 minutes to go into the petting zoo.  we let ourselves into the zoo with a handful of feed only…as soon as we stepped in we were surrounded by animals.  We were the only people in the zoo at this time and that meant that there was no-one else there to distract the animals. So the four of us were surrounded by sheep, goats, alpaca and the big one…Ostriches!  A 7 foot ostrich is quite intimidating especially to a 4 foot girl.  Sophie paniced a little but kept her cool and we tried to get out the main door we had come in.  We struggled a bit and I had to physically move a few sheep but we made it out minus Carol and Ben!  It took us a few more minutes of bribing the animals before we could get themfar enough away from the door to get the others out!

Lesson learned…not only should we not go in with the feed bucket we should not go in with the feed!!

Anyway after that we headed on the hayride tour of the main compound.  Some incredible animals in there – Bison, Cows, More Ostriches, Emu, deer, Zebra and many more.  You fed the animals off the hayride and they follow the thing around getting fed.  There are ways to feed the animals depending on the animal – for example the Bison just gets the food poured down it’s throat!

 

After we finished on the hayride (30 mins or more on the ride) we headed back into the petting zoo (well Soph and I did…Carol and Ben were more reticent)  this time with no food.  We also headed straight into the main area rather than starting in the small area at the top of the zoo where we were easily penned in.  This time we got to interact with the animals in a much better way.

We were in the zoo for at least 3 hours and we all had a good time.  Afterwards we drove up to Marble Falls to visit the BlueBonnet cafe…another highlight of the day was the Peanut butter pie which was incredibly good!  Go there…have pie…you will enjoy it!