Baby Animal Days returns to Cache Valley
The American West Heritage Center is a museum focused on bringing to life the history of American life in the 19th century. This non-profit attraction hosts summer camps, museum exhibits, festivals and other events on a 300-acre property located in Wellsville.
This spring, the center is hosting Baby Animal Days, an event where visitors have the opportunity to see and interact with a variety of young animals.
Wendy King, an employee of nine years at the museum, has been involved in 10 Baby Animal Days.
“It’s been over 15 years, but it started out as one afternoon, and then it grew to a full day, and then multiple days and then we started doing it two different weekends,” King said.
This year, the event took place March 28-30, and then the following weekend, April 3-6. The event has many different parties involved with bringing the animals to the farm and taking care of both visitors and attractions.
“We have chicks, ducklings, goat kids, calves, turtles and bunnies,” King said. “We also have the exotic animals so we bring in a camel, wallabies, kangaroos, capybara and a bunch of different things.”
The event attracts thousands of visitors over the two weekends, which takes a lot of hands-on work to keep things running smoothly.
Mckenna Holmes experienced this firsthand in her first spring working at the event.
“I’m an animal lead, so that means I’m over an area of animals,” Holmes said. “ I make sure that people are being nice to the animals and take care of them, I also give people information on the animals.”
With the variety of animals coming to the center, a lot of sponsors and donors are involved with the event.
“A lot of the animals are ours,” King said. “The chicks, dogs and goats are here year-round. Some farmers bring the other ones in and let us borrow them for the weekend, then take them back afterward. Some we buy and sell, so it’s kind of a variety.”
In addition to the center’s own animals and local farmers, the event received help from Utah’s Petting Zoo Gone Wild, Yellowstone’s Bear World and Cache Valley Mountain Man Rendezvous.
The center makes certain the animals are taken care of and the staff is passionate about what they do.
“The cows live here, and we bottle feed them every couple of hours. They will grow up here to be milking cows, so we do that as well,” Holmes said.
The center encourages interaction with the animals with a goat kid holding station and a place for visitors to pet cows.
“People enjoy how cute they are,” Holmes said. “I mean they’re so little and they will try to eat literally anything, so we have to watch for that, but they are so soft and cute. I love the variety. There are so many different animals and so many different things to do.”
This year will have more events from the center, with the Mountain Man rendezvous event, Pioneer Days festival, fall festival, sleigh rides and more.
“This is our busiest time, we have the most staff this time of year,” King said. “Fifty per day probably. I just love that people are excited to be here. I used to work at the ticket trailer where it got super busy, and I loved it because everybody’s just so excited to be here and it’s just a really happy, positive thing.”