Old MacDonald's Farm — Attraction in Rapid City

Firstly this petting zoo is essentially a breeding facility and a money grab, and a dirty facility at that (I understand animals and farms are not necessarily the cleanest of places, but I've never seen anyone cleaning anything here in particular benches that have feces on them making them unusable...granted this is a risk as there are free roaming chickens and goats, and occasional other animal break-outs). Secondly the goats are clearly conditioned to get food from people and are fairly aggressive about it. I have young children and to have a goat in their face trying to jump on them and follow them can be scary (even when we had no animal feed) vs being able to feed them if they were fenced it. I was able to look beyond these things until my most recent visit which will also be my last. My children love the "train" and so we time our visit to be able to ride it according to the schedule they provide. This time there was a chicken hiding in one of the cars, the worker kindly removed it...but clearly this chicken had seen better days as it was nearly missing all of its feathers on its head and back. (One woman nearby stated that the said animal looked infinitely worse then it did last week...so clearly this has been happening for some time). As soon as the bird was set down it was immediately attacked by 4/5 roosters who scratched at this poor chicken, stood on top of it, and plucked it's feathers out. The surrounding patrons chased the roosters away several times while multiple employees stood and watched...when the train returned the employee driving ran over the chicken and just simply shrugged her shoulders; the chicken somehow walked away only to be attacked AGAIN and was literally bleeding. This was now happening in front of my children and the employees did nothing to stop it. At one point one worker grabbed the chicken and mentioned getting it checked out...but then just set it back down in front of the attacking roosters...so it was once again attacked! The "train station" area is essentially a hallway, and the children are all buckled in, so there was no where to turn to avoid small eyes seeing this situation The entire way home I had upset children asking about this situation. I understand that it is a "farm-like" facility, but there are literal cages in the chicken coop area that they could have put this bird to prevent this situation, and the fact that multiple employees heard and saw this situation unfold and watched patrons try to prevent this while they did nothing is...

What a gem! Visiting this Old MacDonald's was the highlight of our recent trip to South Dakota from Colorado. I was appreciative to see the employees were being mindful of the pandemic and everyone was wearing masks and there was ample supplies of hand sanitizer being distributed.

The gift shop has a great selection with a lot of fun toys and knick knacks to choose from (I regret not buying a ball cap😣). There was even a good selection of drinks and snacks you could purchase.

As soon as we walked into the area where the animals were we were greeted by a friendly goat in search of some treats. All over the farm there were dozens of goats and chickens and turkeys wandering freely, all of them were so friendly. There were also alpacas and llamas, pigs, donkeys, horses, ponies, cows and calves, peacocks, quails, chicks, and probably some more that I'm forgetting. They were all so sweet! It's obvious the animals are very well taken care of. We were so excited to pet the baby chicks, it was so hard to put them down after they fell asleep in our palms!

We loved having the chance to feed the baby calves and watch the piggy race (so cute and funny!) and my niece loved the pony rides. There is also a large playground for the kiddos!

All of the employees were SO friendly and helpful. I'm so happy we visited. This place will for sure be a staple whenever we visit South Dakota and I know it will hold a special place in our...

Such a cute and fun thing for families to do with young kids. Even older ones if they have a deep love for animals, especially baby animals. It's a petting Zoo of animals you'd see on a farm. They sell chickens, turkeys and ducks. You get to help bottle feed the bottle babies. You get to hold the baby pygmy goats and the baby chicks and ducks. You get to go in the pin with just about all the animals. There are pony rides and a "train" ride that I'd meant for the younger kids. The train is just a tractor pulling wagon seats. It's cute. A great thing about it is buying tickets once gets you in for free for the next two days. So you can go 3 times for the price of 1. Bring quarters, the are feeder machines at each stall to feed the animals. They are very calm until they hear the machine, lol. Then they swarm. The goats will jump up on you and you may get dirty, but it's nothing a shower can't wash away. Plus there are hand washing stations. Wear bug spray. I wish I would have thought to do so, we got eaten alive by mosquitoes. My absolute favorite was the baby pygmy goats and snuggling...