Help Save Our Shelters

Bleating Hearts Farm and Sanctuary is being forced to tear down their animal's shelters in the middle of winter and need your support to obtain construction supplies to build structures that do not require a permit or raise the funds to pay for permits.

 

 

Someone with ill intention visited the farm with premeditated plans. They sought out all of our animal structures, questioned our zoning regulations, and tried to have our wildfire water tanks removed. The intention became clear, end Bleating Hearts Farm.

 

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Before becoming a rescue, we checked our zoning and any regulations. We are legally in the correct and we are zoned properly.

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When we built our structures, to the best of our knowledge - pole type, pier block, and open buildings were what we thought was fine without a permit per Napa County. Unfortunately, the unhappy person who tried to end us, did land one. All of our structures need permits. That said, would cost roughly $10,000 alone, without the penalty 4x multiplier fees.

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It would be cheaper and less complicated, for a few reasons, to just tear everything down to the 120sqft that wouldn't require a permit. Putting us right in the middle of December, tearing all shelters for our animals down in the cold and rain. We will have 30 days as of November 29th to start this process and find the means to purchase construction materials at roughly $8,000, on top of medical and feed costs.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

 

Goat dad is working every overtime shift he can to try and help.

 

The buildings in fault are our chicken coops, duck enclosure, main goat barn, and handicapped barn. Putting all of our most vulnerable animals at extreme risk of illness and predator attacks at the worst possible time of year.

How we became
In 2018 a pair of goats were found roaming our neighborhood. With the help of our wonderful neighbors, they were caught and the search to find their owners began. After months of searching and working with animal control, no owners were found. At the time we were clearing our yard and just so happened to need help with an over abundance of blackberries. We knew nothing about goats and in fact were actually scared of them.

We would spend hours at a time every day trying to befriend the two goats that we named Cupcake and Sassy. Cupcake bonded immediately to goat dad, where Sassy took a few weeks longer to win over and bonded to goat mom.

After falling in love with Sassy and Cupcake, learning their personalities and becoming incredibly important in our lives, at six months of living with us Cupcake had become increasingly ill. We had brought her to one of the best universities for testing and learned she was in the final stages of lymphoma.


Winter was coming and Cupcake was given weeks to live. Absolutely devastated we set out to build a barn special for her, so she wouldn't die without a home to call her own.


Every day, all day,  we worked tirelessly on the new barn. We had to get the shelter up before Cupcake lost her fight. She meant the world to us and we owed it to her. Our blood sweat and tears were literally poured into this project for her. 

We finished her barn and installed a window on the side she loved to look out while resting. She was able to enjoy a barn made just for her for about a month before she lost her fight.


That day we made a promise to Cupcake on her dying breaths, while being held and surrounded by family, that we would save animals like her. Any animal that would have been used, abused, dumped, or given up on we would do right by her and give them that second chance they so desperately deserved.

 

Honoring Cupcake
We had started to save many goats with similar circumstances as Cupcake and Sassy would have potentially faced. Hope saved from slaughter, Buttercup had lost her mother and was handicapped from birth, Chip pardoned from slaughter with fragile disfigured horns, and many others to follow. 


In 2019 we extended our care to chickens, using quick kit coops from retail stores. After learning more about chickens and our area's predators, we knew we needed to build something better for them to protect them and offer top tier care. These tiny coops with fragile frames were no match to foxes, coyote, raccoons, or larger animals. Goat mom's father was then on a quest to help design the best coops we will have ever laid our eyes on.

Protecting animals is what we promised to do, we take that quite seriously. We spent quite a bit of time designing the new coops in such a way that any predator, even as small as a rat or snake could not infiltrate them and cause any harm. These are the Fort Knox of coops.

We can safely say without a shadow of a doubt, if anything was to get into the chicken's coops, that it would have to be human and at that point they'd have to deal with the resident's momma bear. We don't recommend that.

Soon after we opened our home to ducks and geese.

 

 

This time purchasing a quality kit structure from a local agricultural store and had it up within the day. For a kit we were honestly impressed and having solid metal floor in the coop, we were comfortable knowing they were safe at night.

 

 

In the summer of 2019 we made our very first large cat rescue effort. Saving over 30 cats and kittens in our first effort. Many having only minutes before euthanasia in the highest kill rate shelter of California.

 

 

One of which being Samson, our absolute sickest kitten. He spent weeks in ICU, constantly being asked to euthanize him, but we never gave up. He turned the corner after a transfusion and was able to come home, to be adopted into our family by goat mom's brother.



Going into 2020 we had found our true specialty being special needs and handicapped goats. We then purchased a prefabricated pole barn for our wheelchair and special goats to have a fully enclosed structure to keep them safe at night. Odin being one, is fully blind and needs this extra safety.

Sid being another that snuggles up with Odin and Peanut at night inside their handicapped barn. Sid was born with contracted tendons in his front legs that require physical therapy, splints, and the aid of a wheelchair as he grows. At night and nap times he is taken out of his cart and back in the handicapped barn for added safety.

 

 

Peanut was born with an under developed brain, leading to complications with bottle feeding and learning on her own. She required months of aid, learning how to eat a mash diet and to single blades of grass. She was given extra love and effort, proving to everyone she was cognitive and able to learn.

 

 

Two years later she is able to play and live life to the fullest. She still has some quirky behaviors that require her to have a special barn with the slower paced goats for feeding and bedtime.

All of these structures play critical roles in our resident's and rescue animal's safety. We cannot operate without them. Please help us in our darkest hour.

 

We are 100% volunteer and no donations go to payroll ever. All donations will always go to the animals.

 

Bleating Hearts Farm and Sanctuary is a 501(c)3 nonprofit rescue and sanctuary located in Napa, California, providing a haven for most often abused or neglected farm and domestic animals in need of a permanent home. Facilitating adoptions for those rehabilitated, in a self-reliant and environmentally conscious plant-based farm agriculture setting, while educating the public about animal friendly lifestyle choices.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

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