Feds Find Ailing Animals, Maggot-Filled Food at Animal Haven Zoo After PETA Tip
Animal Haven Zoo—a ramshackle roadside zoo near Weyauwega, Wisconsin—was cited a staggering 17 times by federal authorities for violating the Animal Welfare Act in 2023. A PETA complaint about ailing animals and facilities in disrepair at the seedy operation led U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) investigators to discover that numerous animals there were deprived of adequate veterinary care and kept in broken enclosures, and a bear was given food teeming with maggots.
PETA is calling on this rundown roadside zoo to transfer the animals to reputable facilities, where they could receive the care they desperately need.
According to the just-released USDA report, investigators found the following at Animal Haven Zoo:
- A pigeon with a significant eye injury
- An alpaca with runny nasal discharge
- A sheep with overgrown hooves
- Multiple chickens with severe feather loss and a “white, thickened, crusty material on their feet and legs,” indicating an untreated illness
Other federal violations included failing to drain standing water, which caused a green, algae-like substance to build up around a tiger’s drinking water; failing to provide care to a sheep in obvious discomfort from an area of bald, irritated skin around their horns; failing to prevent the presence of rat droppings in a primate enclosure; and failing to repair multiple dilapidated enclosures, some of which had sharp, exposed wires that could injure the animals confined to them.
Animal Haven Zoo has had years to clean up its act, but these repeated failures show that it’s either incapable or unwilling to provide animals there with even the absolute bare minimum care they require.
In 2022, Animal Haven Zoo was hit with a $6,450 fine for a that included failing to give a liger water for roughly 20 hours, failing to provide adequate veterinary care to a thin lamb who had signs of diarrhea and who walked in a weak and hunched manner, and letting an employee take a 3-week-old tiger cub to a local school, putting the newborn animal at risk of disease, infection, and stress.
What You Can Do for Rabbits, Tigers, Bears, and Others at Animal Haven
Please urge Animal Haven Zoo to send the animals it exploits to reputable facilities where they could finally get the care they desperately need:
