Our private rescue facility is located in Little Rock, Arkansas. Our main building, or the “Reptile House”, is home to our Animal Ambassadors, Permanent Residents, and animals awaiting adoption. Outside, we have secure enclosures for turtles, tortoises, and some of the lizards to live in during the warmer months. New additions are always quarantined in our Quarantine Facility – which is a fully-detached, separate building – for a minimum of three to six months depending on their condition and other factors. Since tanks take up a lot of space, we primarily use custom-built stacking cages to house most of the animals. These specially designed, reptile-specific cages ensure that our residents have privacy to feel secure, maintain a proper temperature gradient, and can be cleaned easily. With the exception of some of our turtles and tortoises, animals are always housed singly as we have found that most reptiles thrive in solitary conditions and it is easier to monitor health this way. Each animal is given an appropriately-sized enclosure, proper heating and lighting as needed, digital thermometers and thermostats for temperature control, safe substrate, and one or more hiding places to feel secure. All of the reptiles are fed a proper diet on a regular feeding schedule depending on age and species, and supplemented with calcium and vitamins if necessary. Our snakes are all fed frozen/thawed prey – we’ve had a 100% success rate with switching them over from live feeding.
When our animals need professional medical attention, we have a couple wonderful veterinarians to work with. Dr. Marilyn Baeyens and Dr. Amy Hawley at the North Hills Animal Hospital in Sherwood are both highly skilled in reptile medicine and have been invaluable to work with, especially for some of our more extreme rehab cases. Dr. Baeyens, our primary veterinarian, is one of only two vets in the state of Arkansas certified by the Association of Reptile and Amphibian Veterinarians.
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