Lincoln family raises petting zoo animals

LINCOLN, Ill. -- The discordant bleating and mooing coming from Kevin Ritchhart's animal enclosures may not be as sweet as the sounds of birdsong, but like the birdcalls, they are signs of the changing seasons.

"When we start weaning them, they holler," the animal keeper said. "It takes about a week. They always want to be fed."

At least 50 critters make up the menagerie Ritchhart keeps at his home, and that's not counting additional animals he keeps at Chatham to augment the petting zoo he sets up at area festivals.

The beginning of the petting zoo was established years ago when Ritchhart, his wife, Monica, and their sons, Joel, now 10, and Justin, now 13, moved to rural Lincoln and he decided to raise a variety of birds.

Since then, it has evolved into an operation that includes both birds and mammals, kept both at the farm and at Chatham.

Ritchhart's animals stuck pretty close to home until four or five years ago, when someone from the United Methodist Church asked him if he would set up a petting zoo at the church.

"People called after that, and I started the business," he said. "The two boys help quite a bit. Monica helps too, probably more than I realize."

Since his first gig at the church, Ritchhart has expanded to attending fairs, festivals, other churches and, for the first time this year, schools.

Many of the animals are still bottle fed.

"It takes one-and-a-half to two hours in the morning and evening to feed them and clean up after them," Ritchhart said.

Besides helping their father, Joel and Justin show all kinds of waterfowl in area competitions.

"There's always something to do," Ritchhart said.

At the moment, the star of the menagerie is a young red kangaroo named "Roo," who was wearing a No. 4 diaper earlier this summer. He was living in the Ritchhart home.

"They're born gray and then turn red," Ritchhart said. "I got him from a man in Astoria who raises kangaroos."

"They're not very intelligent. You can't toilet train him," Ritchhart said. "I don't worry about the messes he makes, but he likes to chew paper products."

"Everyone wants to see the kangaroo," Ritchhart said. "He's really gotten me a lot of jobs."

Popular as Roo is, though, he comes in second on the list when comparing the exotic animals Ritchhart has owned.

"I had a camel," he said. "He was about six feet tall at the hump when I got rid of him. He was the most exotic and the hardest to take care of. I sold him to a man in Sarasota, Fla."

"They get so big, pretty fast," he said of camels. "He was so stubborn and kind of ornery."

The farm is also stocked with Angora and Alpine goats and a LaMancha breed that has no visible ears.

The Ritchharts also have four-horned sheep, several varieties of deer, miniature cows and a Scottish highlander calf.

"They claim the highlanders are the oldest breed of cows," Ritchhart said. "They're the most docile and the easiest to calve."

In addition to peacocks, geese, ducks and swans, Ritchhart also raises three breeds of chickens.

Together, the animals require six kinds of commercial food. They go through 300 to 350 pounds a week during the prime season between May and November.