Iowa Farm Sanctuary

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Iowa Farm Sanctuary

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Iowa Farm Sanctuary provides a safe haven to rescued farm animals in need of love and compassion.
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10/31/2026

🎃👻 **IT’S TODAY! The 2026 IFS SPOOKY STROLL Is HERE!** 👻🎃

**⏰ 1:00 to 4:00 PM TODAY!** It’s Halloween, and it’s also our **last day of 2026 for the public to visit the animals**, so don’t miss it! 🕷️✨

**🎟️ Get your tickets here:** 👉 https://www.iowafarmsanctuary.org/event-tickets/2026-spooky-stroll

We moved our hours earlier so you can enjoy the Stroll AND still make it home for your community trick or treating. Bring your family, friends, and all your best costumes! 🤡💀

🌟 **What to Expect:**
- A **one-mile-long spooky nature trail** 🌲
- Volunteers in costume introducing you to our **adorable rescued residents** 🐾
- **Pumpkin painting** 🎨
- **Candle making** 🕯️
- **Pumpkin chuck for the animals to feast on** 🎃
- **Trick or treating** 🍬
- Spooky entertainment, haunts, and photo ops perfect for your social media 📸👀
..and more!

📍 **Iowa Farm Sanctuary**
1696 250th Street NW, Oxford, IA 52322

Dress for the weather, wear boots you don’t mind getting muddy, and come meet our 140+ rescued residents. **Grab your tickets, tag your friends, and we’ll see you this afternoon!** 😈💚

Iowa

10/30/2026

Baby’s first cud!💚🐮

If you’ve never watched a cow chew cud, it looks like a calm, slow, side-to-side munch with nothing in his mouth. What you’re actually seeing is one of the most important things a ruminant’s body does, and our newest calf just started doing it.

Cows have one stomach with four compartments: the rumen, reticulum, omasum, and abomasum. When a cow first eats, he swallows his food mostly unchewed and it goes into the rumen, a huge fermentation vat. Later, when he rests, he brings that partly digested mass back up in small balls called cud, chews it thoroughly, and swallows it again. This is rumination, and a healthy adult cow does it for 6 to 8 hours every day.

Why it matters: grass and hay are tough plant fibers. Cows can’t break them down on their own. Billions of microbes living in the rumen do the real work, and chewing cud grinds the fibers finer so those microbes can get at them. All that chewing also produces gallons of saliva, which buffers the rumen’s acidity and keeps the microbial community balanced.

So why are we celebrating a baby? Calves are born with a rumen that isn’t functional yet. At first they live on milk, which bypasses the rumen entirely. The rumen only develops once the calf starts nibbling hay and grass and the microbes move in. When a calf starts chewing cud, it tells us that his rumen is up and running, his gut microbes are established, and his body is transitioning from a milk-fed baby to a true ruminant.

For a rescued calf, that’s a big milestone. It’s also a good sign for his overall health, since a calf who ruminates is eating, relaxed, and feeling safe enough to rest. A cow who stops chewing cud is often telling us something is wrong.

Every little munch is a win for us. 💚

10/29/2026

If there is trouble to be found, you can count on Herbie. Please send our guy all the healing love😢💚

10/25/2026

If you need a reason to smile today, let it be sweet baby Cashew. 💚

10/24/2026

🎃👻 **ONE WEEK LEFT! The 2026 IFS SPOOKY STROLL Is Next Saturday!** 👻🎃

**⏰ Only 7 days to go!** Our **fan-favorite** Spooky Stroll lands on the spookiest day of the year: **HALLOWEEN!** 🕷️✨ It’s also our **last chance of 2026 for the public to visit the animals**, so don’t miss it!

**🎟️ Tickets are still available, but they’re going fast!** 👉https://www.iowafarmsanctuary.org/event-tickets/2026-spooky-stroll

🗓️ **Saturday, October 31st, from 1:00 to 4:00 PM!** We moved our hours earlier so you can enjoy the Stroll AND still make it home for your community trick or treating. Bring your family, friends, and all your best costumes, because we’re about to have a spooktacular time! 🤡💀

🌟 **What to Expect:**
- **Haunted hay rack rides** 🚜
- A **one-mile-long spooky nature trail** 🌲
- Volunteers in costume introducing you to our **adorable rescued residents** 🐾
- Treats and **spooky entertainment** that’ll leave you howling! 🎉

Plus, we’re cranking up the fun with **even MORE haunts, interactive activities, and photo ops** that are perfect for your social media! 📸👀

**Grab your tickets now, spread the word, and tag your friends!** One week from today, we get spooky together. We can’t wait to see you! 😈💚

10/23/2026

We’re sorry for the quiet week. Just a day before celebrating Carl’s life at his 5K, on what would have been his 10th birthday, we learned that BJ has tested positive for Johne’s disease. It is the same disease that took Carl.

BJ came to us in the 2022 Waco rescue, where hundreds of sick and dying animals were found. Nearly four years later, the trauma of that day still lives in us. We have feared this diagnosis since the moment we pulled him out, and carrying it again feels like more than we can bear.

Johne’s (pronounced “yo-knees”) is an incurable wasting disease caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis. Animals are usually infected as newborns, and the disease stays silent for years. BJ eats and eats, but his body is slowly starving. Tests are unreliable in early infection, and infected animals can shed bacteria before they look sick.
For now, we are using strict biosecurity, giving BJ everything he wants to eat, and waiting until he tells us he is tired.

Most animals raised for food are slaughtered long before this disease ever shows itself, and very few people talk about it. Today we are resharing video of where BJ’s life began, and the place that set all of this in motion.

Thank you for grieving with us. The anticipatory grief of his loss coupled with the reflection of where his life started is heavy on us.

10/18/2026

We never force it.💚

Clara has been a sanctuary resident for a few months now. We always want to free our residents from the marks of their pasts, but never at the cost of traumatizing them.

Clara took the longest of anyone to let us remove her ear tag. She arrived fearful and a bit aggressive, and until recently she’d try to kick any human who came too close.

But she has learned the faces and voices of those she can trust, and she’s letting her walls down. When she finally told us she was ready, we got the snippers and made it official.

Just Clara. Forever.🐮

10/17/2026

We had a beautiful celebration of life today!

Thank you to all the runners, cheerleaders and volunteers who made this day magical.

And thanks to Carl for sending us this beautiful day from the rainbow bridge.

10/14/2026

Have you ever seen a cow roll over for a belly rub? Now you have! 🐄

The sentience in these beings is so obvious, it’s impossible to fathom how we justify what we do to them.

Bradley loves hugs, he loves having his hair brushed, and he loves his bff, Panda.

Let. Them. Live.

Address

1696 250th Street NW
Oxford, IA
52322

Opening Hours

1pm - 4pm

Telephone

+13193290205

Website

http://iowafarmsanctuary.org/

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