BRECKSVILLE, Ohio — For most people, one or two pets is enough. Carly and Andrew Keserich are not most people. They take in as many animals as they can, as the founders of The Homestead Animal Sanctuary.
“We’ve rescued hundreds and fostered hundreds,” she said. “I just wanted to help when I could and where I could and I think we’ve done just that.”
The Homestead is dedicated to saving abused, neglected or surrendered farm animals.
Currently, they have 28 residents, consisting of lambs, goats, chickens, turkeys, pigs and more.
Five years ago, the couple was living in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood with their dog, their pig and their chicken coop.
“It was sort of this niche thing, and it really took off in the neighborhood,” said Carly. “We started getting all these calls and people asking if we would take their animals. That turned into ‘Hey, do you want my pig,’ or ‘Hey, so-and-so has a goat, do you want it?’ So we knew it was something there was definitely a need for.”
In 2020, the couple packed up their items and moved their animals to their six-acre property on Snowville Road in Brecksville.
“I was like, ‘Uh-oh, what are we getting into?” joked Andrew.
The Homestead Animal Sanctuary continued to grow.
“It’s shocking how many calls we get on a daily, daily basis,” said Andrew. “The business Carly has built, it’s truly special.”
The focus is on farm animals.
“If animals come to us and they are healthy and they are totally fine to join another flock or another herd, I’ll adopt them out to approved adopters,” said Carly.
But if the animal’s circumstances don’t allow for adoption, like the couple’s special needs lamb, they’ll live out the rest of their lives at The Homestead.
Carly said animals come to them as owner-surrendered, from livestock farms, abused and neglected.
“There’s such a range. One of our goats came from an owner that was incarcerated and he was just left behind,” she said.
But, mostly, the Homestead receives discarded pets that were bought and dumped as they got older. The need is greater after holidays like Easter or Thanksgiving.
“It can be as small as chicken, ducks, waterfowl that are at your local feed store. They do an annual sales every Easter time and people are buying them, well-intended, for children as gifts, but then they realize ‘Oh gosh, they probably need to be outside, or have a setup, and this is a bigger expense than I realized,’” she said.
She said people are enamored by the small chicks and pigs but don’t realize they don’t stay small.
“Pigs have to be one of my top calls because they grow for five years, of course they gain a ton of weight. They do not stay small,” she added.
And while she encourages people to do their research before buying a farm animal as a pet, she added it’s important to realize you can’t just throw a rabbit into the woods or ducks into a pond.
“They’re made to be with humans and rely on their care. People don’t realize that, and they just throw them in the woods, and they won’t thrive,” she said. “They don’t have that innate instinct to go forage and find food on their own and nest on their own.”
The Homestead Sanctuary relies purely on donations. If you’d like to learn more and help, just click here.
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