🐾 A Note About Our Capybara Experience

After much thought and consideration, we’ve made the difficult decision to close our Capybara Experience at DK Farms & Gardens.

Our capybaras have brought countless smiles and unforgettable memories to visitors, and this decision was not made lightly. Unfortunately, several factors have made it increasingly challenging to maintain this experience to the standard our guests — and our animals — deserve.

• Specialized Care & Feeding: Capybaras require a specific diet different from the rest of our farm animals. Their specialized feed has become increasingly expensive and inconvenient to source compared to the other animals.

• Limited Interaction Rules: Because capybaras are classified as an exotic species, we are not permitted to allow hand-feeding or close interaction for general guests, which limits the type of encounter we can safely offer and limits the quanitity we are able to serve. This also raises insurance concerns as liablity and waivers are in play.

• Rising Replacement Costs: The cost to purchase and properly transport a capybara has risen dramatically due to the recent popularity — now almost $7,500 per animal — making it financially unrealistic to replace or expand our group and adding a high wait time on new animals.

• Supporting the breeders: We are concerned with the current possible inbreeding with the capybara sellers and we are not interested in supporting the industry of selling weak and young animals. Unfortunately its the only way to buy them right now and just isn't sitting well with us.

• Past Health Concerns: We also faced a heartbreaking loss when one of our previous capybaras passed due to contaminated donated produce with salmonella . Since then, we’ve been even more cautious about sourcing, which adds further expense and complexity. With that heart break and unexpected loss it really dampered our desire to continue with this very sensitive animal.

• Inconsistent Bookings & Staffing: While the experience was loved by many, it didn’t receive consistent enough bookings to support dedicated staffing & training year-round. As we were planning for this new exhibit, so was the capybara cafe and their brand and marketing is much stronger than ours. This made scheduling and encounter coverage increasingly difficult after our launch. Our goal was to create 3 days of work 4 days of rest for the animal. But not all guests go the website to see we only offered it 3 days a week, so it created frustration to walk ins when the encounters were not available. 

• Guest Costs: Due to licensing, Building the encounter, Staffing, Feed and care needs it required an expensive price tag for the experience. Even though our goal was to price this experience less than the competition it still was perceived as too expensive to be family friendly and we will be replacing this with a more affordable and easier experience to our current operation with a differnt animal. 

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As much as we love these gentle giants, we have to make decisions that are sustainable for the farm as a whole and in the best interest of the animals. As much as our hearts want to keep this experience alive, our responsibility is to the animals first. The reality is with all the trouble we experinced so far it's easier to go a different direction with the space.

We want to sincerely thank everyone who supported and enjoyed our Capybara Experience over the recent year — your enthusiasm and love for these incredible creatures mean the world to us.

Although this chapter is closing, we remain dedicated to offering new and exciting animal encounters and experiences here at DK Farms & Gardens. Stay tuned 

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We are currently working with the Capybara Cafe to create a new space and home for Jelly as we say good bye and move forward to something that works better for the future.

— The DK Farms & Gardens Team