Ranch owners scrambled to protect animals and plants vulnerable to cold, windy weather blowing into Broward and Miami-Dade Counties.
At Maranda Farm and Ranch, staff are using special coats and stacked bales of hay to keep animals warm.
Behind the petting zoo’s gate, staff led horses wearing insulated coats to buckets of minerals to make the animals thirsty for water. As temperatures plunge, ranch CEO Chelsea Maranda’s biggest fear rises.
“Horses, mostly, when the temperature changes, they’ll stop drinking water,” she said. “When that happens, then they can have a whole other set of issues.”
Those issues include colic, Maranda said. Dehydrated horses suffer abdominal pain capable of killing them, she said. So, the staff does everything it can to protect the horses in their stable.
Staff also stacked bales of hay around the tortoise in the petting zoo. The farm and ranch have hundreds of animals, including goats, chickens, pigs, and even an emu family. The emu father squatted on eggs to keep them warmon Thursday evening.
“Animals are pretty hardy,” Maranda said.
She said her team worries more about sensitive plants in their nursery, which is a big source of income for the ranch and farm.
“What I’ll be doing tonight, probably in the next few hours, I’ll start bringing some of these trees [in pots] inside [the store],” Maranda said.
Staff planned to work long hours to shield trees from wind and cold temperatures. Still, they are also making sure the animals have what is needed to survive.
