Good news out of a rough situation: the roughly 70 barnyard animals seized from a neglected Boone County property last month have, for the most part, already found new homes — and fast.
Columbia/Boone County Animal Control removed the animals — 24 sheep, goats and lambs, 45 chickens and 2 turkeys — from a property on North Dozier Station Road, east of Columbia, on July 29, after the owner was evicted and the animals were left without food or water in the barn, according to ABC 17 News. Two lambs were found dead on arrival, per KOMU 8 — a hard reminder of the conditions the rest of the herd was pulled out of.
The animals spent a 30-day legal hold at the Boone County Fairgrounds while the case worked through a disposition hearing. A judge ultimately awarded custody to the Central Missouri Humane Society after the former owner failed to pay a bond of more than $19,000, ABC 17 reported.
That’s when the real good news started. Once the shelter — already stretched well past its usual capacity for farm animals — put out the call for adopters, the response was immediate. Within about eight hours, every sheep, goat, lamb and turkey in the group had been claimed; by 5:30 that afternoon, KOMU reported, all of them had homes lined up. Central Missouri Humane Society associate director Michelle Casey told KOMU the shelter’s guiding concern throughout was “the well-being of these animals.”
The chickens were still in the shelter’s care as of the most recent reporting — a smaller, slower-moving tail end to an otherwise quick turnaround for the rest of the herd.
It’s the kind of story that’s easy to miss in the daily churn: a shelter that took in more animals than it was built to house, a community that showed up within hours, and a bad situation that mostly ended the way you’d hope it would.
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