Animal Gardens Petting Zoo — Attraction in Town of Delavan

We visited Animal Gardens during their last weekend of the season. Some of the animals had already been moved to their winter quarters. They have a shop where you purchase tickets and can get some souvenir items. We went with the $8 dollar entry and also purchased train tickets. Our 2 and under kiddos had free entry. In the open barnyard area we were given ice cream cones filled with pellets to feed the many goats that came up to us looking for food as well as a few other animals including a donkey and a Llama. The train is an older, simple and colorful model with a good number of cars. The train ride took us through an open field where we saw some of the Dancing Horses outside in the distance and through a wooded area where they have some animal exhibits. Our guide, Cassandra, stopped at the exhibits to tell us about the animals. The most memorable were three beautiful foxes; one white, one black, one red. The end destination is a large deer enclosure where we were given additional pellet filled ice cream cones to feed the deer through the fence. We were a bit underwhelmed by our experience overall though, to be fair, this being the last weeknd of the season may have been a factor. However, as they were still selling regular priced tickets I would have expected their typical experience. Not sure if we...

Animal Gardens has unquestionably educated & introduced more youth and all ages to the beauty of nature and animals' intelligence levels, through Dana Montana's dream to have a place to share her love and passion of horses and other animals. It's difficult working with part-time employees; training; feeding diverse species of wildlife; cleaning environments; keeping competent 'handy men' on staff; marketing; AND working with family. If Dana was a playboy bunny in the early 60's, that would make her around 80 years old. Few 80 year olds could keep this pace. And operate two night clubs! God wants us to take care of His animals. Anyone casting negative comments should offer to help her and the animals. You would see just how much HARD WORK it is taking care of animals. AND people. Animal Gardens is a fabulous place. I highly recommend it to families, church groups, schools...I would LOVE to work there and HELP Dana and LEARN from such an incredible person. I APPLAUD all...

We came here on a Sunday afternoon and were really disappointed by the conditions of this place. First, it is not worth the $20 you pay for a 10 minute train ride and a petting zoo. The train ride consisted of seeing about 6 animals and the tour guide gave us a small description of each. She said it would take about 25 min but it was much quicker than that. These animals are in small cages that look rundown and just not cared for. Since these are wild animals, they need to have more spacious habitats. The area where these animals are and where the train passes through looks abandoned as the weeds are overgrown and the cages of the animals look really old. The pictures you see online are not a true description of what you see on site. The best part was being able to feed the donkey and goats. Even though we felt the $20 was not worth it, I mostly felt bad seeing the animals in the state...