- People just don't seem to care.
We've gotta learn how to care.
We gotta learn how to look out
for one another and look out for animals.
Nobody should ever, animals shouldn't ever suffer
the pain they suffer, you know,
they have feelings like we do.
They have emotions like we do.
(light tender music)
Hi, I'm Mark Bagley, I'm with Serenity Animal Farms.
It's an exotic animal rescue for exotic
and farm animals located in Clanton, Alabama.
(light tender music continues)
I started rescuing animals, I was raised on a farm.
We had everything from cows, sheep, horses, pigs.
So I learned a lot growing up on a farm.
I took that knowledge and brought it up here.
And when I was growing up, like I said,
we would find a raccoon that had fallen out of a tree,
we'd raise that, and we'd find a possum.
One of the first animals I ever had was a skunk.
My dad was, how would I say it?
A naturalist, he instilled on me that love he had
for animals and nature, and the environment.
(light tender music continues)
It got started when I showed up
and bought this place in 2007.
We started with a few goats, ended up with a donkey,
and then we found out that there was a niche out there
in the system where there's horse rescues,
there's dog rescues, there's reptile rescues.
There really wasn't a rescue for exotic and farm animals.
So that's why we started, we opened up Serenity Animal Farms
to take care of that need right there
to help animals, is our goal and our mission.
(light tender music swells)
We started tours mainly for educational purposes.
There's so much that people don't know about animals.
Until you educate people and they can see
an animal firsthand, you know,
here's an animal that may have been abused,
here's an animal that was under fed,
you know, here's an animal on a farm.
They don't know anything about 'em until they learn
about 'em and you gotta start at a young age.
So we started offering free educational tours
with families and kids to come through.
And I mean, kids learn a lot, they learn,
they've never, they've never got opportunity
to pet an emu or feed an emu or something
or look at an ostrich up close or hold a five year old up
and let him pat a camel on the head, you know?
And it's, they learn from that,
and I hope they take something they learn here,
how we're, our love of animals, I hope they take it
and will keep it up through with their adult life,
so they can be better people and better people to animals.
(light tender music continues)
We're not here to exploit the animals or anything like that.
We're here to give 'em a life, the rest of their life,
as long as I'm here, they'll have a place to stay.
They have shelter, food, medicine,
and they're gonna be here as long as I'm here,
as long as I can take care of 'em.
They're here with us, it's a sanctuary for them.
We don't adopt animals out and that's just part of our,
like I said, a good steward for the animal,
and once they come here, this is their home.
They become one of my kids and I've got, like I say,
right now 177 kids, (chuckles).
On an average week, number one word that comes
to mind is labor, number one, it's a labor of love
and number two, it's a lot of work.
We work the farm every day, it is an actually functioning,
working farm where we have to feed animals every day,
we have to take care of animal, we have to water, hay, feed.
We go get produce from several food banks.
We have to sort the produce out, who can eat what.
Some animals will eat this, some animals won't eat this,
so instead of food going to waste,
we have to know what food they can eat.
If any animal's out, we have to fix fences, put 'em back in.
I have a regular job too, so I've gotta do a regular job.
Then we do this on the side where volunteers come help.
So there's a lot of work, and like I say,
number one word sums it up is labor.
And if you didn't have a labor for a love of animals,
you wouldn't do this because it's a lot of work.
Well, I'd like to see us grow.
We've got a lot of room for expansion here.
We're having trouble right now
having people help us clearing some more land
so we could open up some more fields,
but I would love to see us grow.
I'd like to see more community involvement,
more educational things going on for the kids.
I mean, there's such a great opportunity here,
but we're just on the cusp of just barely coming
outta the ground right now, I mean, it's a lot of work
and we've got it this far, but there's so much more we can
do here to educate people. (light tender music continues)
And I tell everybody, you want help a rescue, get involved.
That's the main thing, they need volunteers,
you know, more than anything, people that can help 'em,
everything from fixing a pen, we have electrical work,
we have plumbing work, we have all kind of stuff,
carpentry work that we could always use help in.
And if you have a skill and you wanna help a rescue,
go help a rescue, they're more than glad to let you help 'em
with basic things, it's not all about money,
it's about what you can do and what you know.
(light tender music fades)