Beloved of the many children that attend the Greene County Fair, the Barnyard Petting Zoo is a hard exhibit to pass up. Adorable baby animals, including goat kids, miniature donkeys and horses, piglets, and more are available to pet and feed – something many people have never experienced.
The Barnyard Petting Zoo started as a labor of love for Jan Marchezak. She’s always had a love of the land and animals and grew up on a dairy farm, hearing stories of her grandfather’s cattle. Jan’s grandfather was a Czechslovakian coal miner that raised cattle at his home and sold the milk to the nearby community. Her father grew up helping with the cattle, milking, and transportation. Eventually he bought his own farm in Washington County, where Jan grew up, participating and showing her dairy cattle at the local fairs as a 4-H member, including Greene County. When she moved into her own home, she started saving orphaned farm animals and raising them.
Thirty-nine years ago, Harry Hank, the fair manager of the Washington County Fair, approached Jan with the idea to start a petting zoo at the fair. Her father was a member of the board at the time and he had shared stories about Jan’s animals. At first she was skeptical of the idea, but eventually she decided it was just one week, so she gathered up the animals, put them in the bed and front of a pickup, and headed to the fair for the first time. 
During that fair, the retiring Secretary of Agriculture approached her about a petting zoo at Point State Park in Pittsburgh. Reluctantly, Jan agreed, borrowed her father’s truck and trailer and headed to another fair. “I didn’t know anything about running a petting zoo,” Jan admits with a laugh. “And since then, the zoo has grown in spite of me. I didn’t advertise or promote it, but the word got out.”
The zoo now has six trucks and trailers they use for their shows and has branched into parties, movie and television work. The current farm now includes 40 prime acres and they’ve recently bought another 87 acres, where they hope to open an animal park. “I love sharing these animals with others,” Jan says. “At first it was hard, but it’s a wonderful thing that we’re doing. We bring these animals to many places where the kids have never seen a calf in person.” She adds, “I’ve learned so much doing this.”
This year, many children – and adults- are missing out on the chance to see, touch and feed these animals. And the Barnyard Petting Zoo is also missing their chance to bring their favorite babies to visit. To keep sharing their babies with the community, the Barnyard Petting Zoo has begun offering an on-the-farm petting zoo tour. The tour allows visitors to have an up-close-and-personal visit with the baby animals and bottle-feeding is included. Visitors also receive a tour of the barns and visit the adult animals, including Romeo the bull camel and a herd of wildebeest. This is the first year that the petting zoo has invited people to tour the farm, thanks to the new regulations in place concerning COVID-19. “Our trucks and trailers have been sitting idle for most of 2020 because of the coronavirus. We’ve had to open the farm to tour groups and it’s been very popular,” Jan shares. “But we’ve always had calls from people about visiting the farm.”
Jan currently operates the business with her youngest son, Jeremy, his wife, Mindy, and their two sons, Max and Owen, making it truly a family business. Jan’s daughter and son-in-law, Jaimie and Grant Kemmerer, operate the nearby Wild World of Animals, specializing in educational and entertaining wildlife shows. Like Jan, they are now offering tours of their 200 animals including big cats, wolves, reptiles, birds, small mammals, primates, and amphibians.
FMI about the Barnyard Petting Zoo or the Wild World of Animals, visit barnyardpettingzoo.com or wildworldofanimals.org. Get out of the house and get up close and personal with some amazing animals!