Emily Landry (00:01)
Hello everyone. Welcome to Whitley Penn Talks, where we give you valuable information to help you make confident informed decisions and move your business forward. My name is Emily Landry and today we are talking about how Austin Farm Sanctuary is making lasting impacts on the community of Austin’s perception on the relationship between humans and farm animals. I’m excited to be joined by Chris Fullerwig co-founder of Austin Farm Sanctuary to bring insight to this topic. Welcome Chris.

Chris Fuller-Wigg (00:35)
Hey, Emily. Thanks for having me.

Emily Landry (00:38)
Oh, it’s so good to have you. So Chris and I recorded this podcast over a year ago, couldn’t get it to work technically. So we’re back. We are back to redo the podcast and we’re better than ever now. So I’m going to have you start by talking about your background and what brought you and your wife to start a nonprofit and the turning point to see what was this, how, how this would be your calling.

Chris Fuller-Wigg (00:45)
It was just too good, it broke the internet. Yeah.

Yeah, so my wife Angela and I first kind of stumbled upon this life. We were buying our first home together in September of 2016. We found out about two goats that were in need, Bertha and Cookie. They were gonna be killed if we didn’t intervene and we happened to get this phone call. So we stepped up and turned our little half acre backyard into a dog and goat backyard that then led to us getting a call about a pig. And we kind of had just this awareness that there were these animals beyond dogs and cats that could be saved, that we now, with this bigger backyard, had an opportunity to help. And so that kind of launched us fully into this mission of specifically focusing on rescuing farm animals and kind of finding that passion and like a purpose left unfulfilled.

Emily Landry (01:50)
Love it. It’s such a fun purpose and the beautiful cows in the background for you today too. So for people just being introduced to the organization, you began in 2016. So can you share the mission and history of the organization for us?

Chris Fuller-Wigg (01:58)
Yeah, for sure. So our mission is to rescue and rehabilitate farm animals and provide them a forever home in our care. And then at the same time, advocating for these types of individuals on like a larger stage and sharing their stories, the story of Pax rescued from the dairy industry or Doya from FFA or, you know, a buddy who was born blind at a farm.

So telling these individual stories is really what we found kind of some value in if you will, as an organization kind of early on in 2016. So as in wanting to share that with our community that we then kind of broadened out and really started working on, you know, having ambassador residents like Buddy that you’re very familiar with at the sanctuary and making sure that we could platform these typically unseen but very special animals.

Emily Landry (03:03)
So I joke like, you’ve heard me talk before we started recording about Buddy, who I have here. You also did a calendar one year, or at least one year I have, with some of the residents. And it was a huge hit in the Fort Worth office where I sit. Everyone wanted to know about the animals, wanted to know what was going on at Austin Farm Sanctuary. And if you haven’t, we’re going to plug it later, it’s going to your website. But you’ll have one of the most beautiful, if not the most beautiful, websites I’ve ever seen. So it’s just a great, very visual fun place to learn more about your residents, as you call them, and the fun creatures that you’ve gotten to work with over the years.

Chris Fuller-Wigg (03:51)
Yeah, thank you. Our website’s special because it does get to showcase all of the residents and individuals here and really give them their own spot, kind of their own bio and their stories. So not this collection of cows or collection of pigs or flock of chickens like we think of them. There’s these individuals you get to scroll through and see Tink and Wally and Milkshake and Root Beer and Angel and kind of learn about some of them. So yeah, I encourage people to hop on over as well and get to know an animal and then come meet them.

Emily Landry (04:20)
Yes. So you’ve rescued animals from all over the country. Is there any particular rescue story or resident that’s left an impact on you?

Chris Fuller-Wigg (04:30)
Hmm. Man, so Doya is the very first pig we rescued. He’s a pretty obvious choice for this. But since you mentioned across the country, there’s two pretty significant rescues that we’ve done on both the coast. So we rescued multiple times. We rescued from a religious mass sacrifice that happens in New York every year where we saved actually with along with a couple of organizations, 200 chicks from that situation and brought them all the way to Texas. And we rescued 30 of the individuals from that. And so that was a really big move of getting hundreds of chickens rescued from this mass sacrifice in the streets of New York and then brought all the way to Texas and dropped off along the way at sanctuaries. And there’s a really tight knit community of sanctuaries. So we’re able to help orchestrate with this group, know, 12 different drop-off locations when they came to us.

So that was nice because not only get these animals out of harm kind of en masse, but also it showed like how we people who care for these specific types of animals can like work together to like create a network to help them in, you know, a large quantity. And then more recently, there’s a group of water buffalo that we rescued from Northern California and they’ve kind of taken like the internet by storm. There’s a pin reel we have on our Instagram about them all kind of being alone and then finding each other. And they’re a pretty fun story, but they were rescued from the dairy industry in Northern California and in two separate rescue missions, three months apart, brought all the way here. And now our love and our like our acre pond and their 12 acres of grazing, just exploring the sanctuary as free water buffalo.

Emily Landry (06:10)
I love it. Did you think you would ever rescue buffalo?

Chris Fuller-Wigg (06:15)
Yeah, that was not on the bingo card until the day I got the phone call about hey, there’s a water buffalo in rescue and then it was like the possibility became there. Yeah. They’re pretty amazing to see honestly. They’re so big and so like just majestic and powerful looking. They’re pretty incredible. I was gonna go with that as the background but I found these ones of my girls, my old lady cows here.

Emily Landry (06:25)
That’s pretty cool.

So what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced in running the sanctuary and how have you overcome them? Obviously moving Buffalo is probably not the easiest thing to do.

Chris Fuller-Wigg (06:57)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think, I guess it’s twofold. So one, mean, the hardest thing for most nonprofits is being able to fundraise to grow and expend the impact of your mission. It was fantastic eight years ago, but our half acre establishment is much different than our 250 residents with five staff and 95 acres. So trying to be able to find ways to scale that has been probably the most like…overwhelming because it has so much risk as we take on these lives that if our mission fails and our fundraising fails, then we have lives to care for. So that’s like hurdle number one. We’ve luckily found a good community of people that have allowed for this to happen. And so that that’s going well.

And then the second item that I would mention that specifically in farm animal rescue is like a roadblock we have to overcome is that there’s not really much referenceable material for super quality care for farmed animals. We’re trying to let them live to be 30 years old or a blind calf to survive kind of his first couple of years of life. And so there’s a lot of like pushing the envelope and we work closely with Texas A&M and their veterinary team to like learn more about farmed animals so we can provide dog and cat level care, but to animals that we care about just as much.

And so that’s been the learning curve of going from, yeah, 15 residents to 250, but needing to know all the nuances about them and kind of leading the charge on actually having the awareness of what do they need to be healthy and happy. 

Emily Landry (08:31)
It’s interesting you mentioned the partnership with Texas A&M. Have you gotten to know several people on staff at A&M as a result of the work you’re doing? 

Chris Fuller-Wigg (08:42)
Yeah, I mean, their veterinary team and me definitely have each other saved in like our phone books. There’s a, you know, on some spurts, like for the last like three months, we had a lot of medical rescues or emergency medical things or something happened. And so we have a resident on average in there every week, whether they’re there for just a day and a visit, or they’re there for some sort of five to 10 day long, like cancer treatment. And so we’re working pretty closely with their team. Like for example, we do have multiple pigs that have skin cancer.

And so they’re going through chemotherapy and going there and visit, but there’s not a whole lot of people investing in skin chemotherapy for their pigs. And so that actually is helping to like grow the patient exposures that these students that are in the veterinary school, that are at the veterinary clinic to do as well. And so it’s kind of our part to like also just extend the care for not just our 250 residents, but animals everywhere to be able to be seen a little bit more.

Emily Landry (09:38)
That’s really cool. A has been really helpful, I feel like, advancing animal care around the United States, but it’s neat to get to see them work with you guys on this particular endeavor with these residents.

Chris Fuller-Wigg (09:40)
It’s been pretty rewarding.

Yeah, like Wally broke his femur two years ago. 700 pound pig broke his back right femur. Nobody’s ever fixed a pig’s femur before, but they did a procedure that they’ve done in large dogs and horses before and repaired his femur. And Wally, two and a half years later is living his best life with all of his friends out in the 12 acre piglandia. So yeah, it’s been cool.

Emily Landry (10:14)
That’s really cool. So what, well I would say like, I would think there’s a lot of emotional weight to managing a rescue and also needing to educate people about what’s going on and advocating but not overwhelming. So how do you approach the need to inspire change and manage that?

Chris Fuller-Wigg (10:42)
Yeah, that’s a good question. To be most impactful on our mission, what I found is allowing for people to gain clarity on the individuality of these animals. Like this is something that when we took in Bertha and Cookie, I never really considered goats. I loved animals, but I hadn’t really considered goats until I knew too deeply.

And then I met Doya and he was the pig. He’s the pig that’s on our shirts. He started kind of the sanctuary because he was that pivot point. Cause there was this like titular character that was like, wow, he’s just so deep and complex. And so to be able to inspire change, what we hope to do is create connections. So we invite people to come out to the sanctuary and do a tour, go to our social media where we’re telling stories about this almost happened to this pig or this chicken or this did happen to this cow, but they got into this situation and now this is what life looks like. So if we can kind of juxtapose the plight of these billions and trillions that we don’t ever really know about or see by bringing attention to the ones that escape that fate, then hopefully we can allow for, again, not me to inspire, but Pax and Knox and Doya and Willie and Wally to inspire.

So people ask questions when they come on tours and I’m very mindful of about telling the stories of the residents, not the story of me and where I got to where I am, but the story of the residents. And so hopefully people can then connect with an individual and then allow for their journey and the value that they place on these animals to start to kind of maybe connect a little bit more than it did previously.

Emily Landry (12:08)
I think too, it’s so much easier to relate to the plight of what’s happening to someone’s dog because you’ve probably had a dog growing up, but you said it’s harder to wrap your mind around what’s happening to a goat because you maybe haven’t grown up around a goat.

Chris Fuller-Wigg (12:27)
Mm-hmm.

100%.

Emily Landry (12:36)
Once you get to go to the sanctuary and you get to be around the animals and, or you follow you guys on social media, which we do, and we love the stories and get to see what’s happening with the creatures at the sanctuary. Like get to see like, they really do truly have personalities. Just like my dog has a very big personality, so does so many of the creatures that you’ve got, like have these unique capabilities and pieces of who they are and those are not all the same. They might have similar characteristics, but you need to fall in love with one to fall in love with saving them, I think.

Chris Fuller-Wigg (13:07)
Mm-hmm.

I love that. Yep,

Emily Landry (13:16)
It’s super cool. And I’ve even told you, Chris, my dog is obsessed with cows. We don’t know why exactly she is obsessed with cows, but we will leave YouTube on like all day long for her to watch – We call them moomoo’s – Her to watch the moomoo cows all day. And she’ll just sit there and like while we’re leaving, like just be glued in. And to her, they’re so fascinating. And I think that’s so amazing that she can see them. And I don’t know if she thinks they’re gigantic dogs or she thinks that they’re cows, but she’s crazy about them. And it’s made us crazy about learning more about cows too, like trying to learn more. And so it’s been fun to go onto your page and see what’s happening with some of the cows on your site.

Chris Fuller-Wigg (13:59)
Thank you. Just took in baby Valentino last weekend, a blind calf born at a local ranch. And so he is living large and in the medical barn about to move in with the rest of the blind cow population.

Emily Landry (14:22)
It’s so cute. I love it. So let’s talk about some of the challenges facing animal-focused nonprofits. Is there anything in particular you think is really big, really difficult that you’re facing that maybe people aren’t aware of?

Chris Fuller-Wigg (14:23)
He’s really sweet.

Hmm.

Well, I think for us specifically as a farm animal rescue nonprofit, like we don’t get government funding or anything like no city shelters. We kind of receive a lot of the quote unquote burden of, you know, pigs or roosters or whatever that are dumped at these places and come here, but we don’t receive funding state or federal. So we get that question a lot.

So, I think kind of just centering around all of our success in fundraising is really built off of working with the community very closely, because it’s not coming from any other sources. But then otherwise, I mean, when it comes to being an animal nonprofit, it’s tough because it feels, it can almost feel never ending, like the journey to like have it so that there’s no stray dogs dumped in, you know, the valley or something that we’re like rescuing from. Like that’s just, that’s a pretty tough hurdle that I really see an end at.

So I think that it then becomes in a way hard to fundraise because you feel like you continue to rescue for fundraise for rescue efforts. And it’s just, we’re kind of the end and like the, and the achieving of this mission. But then I think that we can get grounded in like that every individual is worth it. So whatever, if it’s like, you know, this dog and then this dog versus this rescue, it’s like just the specific individual in our case, you know, cow, chicken, water, buffalo, what have you. But, so, but I think that is hard mostly on the organization to fundraise. Cause you feel like you’re just asking for the kind of same thing that almost feels like it is just always rotating. So I think that’s sometimes one of the hardships of fundraising for animal-based nonprofit.

Emily Landry (16:18)
I think this wasn’t my question, but something I’d say is hard for you guys too is, a lot of nonprofits have been able to pivot away from a physical location and physical expenses for maintaining property as we’ve sort of moved to more remote-based work. You can’t do that if you have 150 creatures to care for and residents on the property. You have to have a lot of space for buffalo and cows and chickens and pigs to do their thing.

Chris Fuller-Wigg (16:29)
Yeah, and we can’t really abide by like an adoption or like boarding model. Like some shelters could even move to that. But like, yeah, there’s nobody who’s short term taking in a long horn in their backyard while we figure out long term housing. So it’s a very good point.

Emily Landry (16:59)
I think too, like with it, it’s gonna be, I mean obviously you guys have been blessed to get the 95 acres that you’re on, but if the need continues to grow, you may need more land in an area in Texas that is not getting less expensive to live in either. So I think it’s another interesting challenge you guys will maybe have ahead of you is if your mission sort of continues to grow and expand and you get more and more creatures to come be residents. What do you do? You know, how do you keep expanding and how do you make that work worthwhile for everyone without strapping yourselves to distance or anything like that? That’s going to be an interesting path versus a lot of other nonprofits don’t have to face that particular battle.

Chris Fuller-Wigg (17:39)
No doubt. Yeah, we’re lucky that when we chose this place, we tried to find it in an area where there was a lot of adjacent land that’s currently either used for cow pastures or just forest. And so our hope is that there’s 40 here, another 40 there, another 90 there that maybe we’d be able to figure out over the coming years or decades or whatever. But absolutely that will become a, and already kind of has become a little bit of a restriction, you know, because yeah.

Emily Landry (18:20)
Sure.

Outgrow the space.

Chris Fuller-Wigg (18:28)
Yeah, and we would never want to impact the beauty of the space or the quality of life for the residents. Our goal is to showcase a beautiful life as what Sanctuary is, not just living.

Emily Landry (18:39)
Yeah. So if you were to dream big and think about something for the sanctuary to accomplish in the next five years, what is a really big dream for you? Is it a particular animal you’d love to see or is it, you know?

Chris Fuller-Wigg (18:56)
We got to get on these like Jurassic World reboots, you know, get a baby T-Rex or something out here. We’d probably look for a brontosaurus. We need some leaf eaters. We have way too many things for a T-Rex to kind of try to obliterate. But yeah, for the next five years, I mean, so there is components of like that scaling in size and things like that that would be cool. What I’d like to be more focused on is five years of, you know, if we talk about we can rescue 250 animals or a thousand depending.

Emily Landry (19:05)
Okay.

Chris Fuller-Wigg (19:25)
Like our goal is to rescue millions or billions, know, save them all as it were. And so what I’d like to see develop a lot in our next five years is like our programming for education, whether that’s like having more of a focus on our social media and really telling the stories of like, did you know that chickens don’t typically lay three eggs in a week? And here’s their story. You know, like just some bits of information that kind of do that. We also run programs like education programs like leap at the school, at the sanctuary.

And we want to open up like a preschool kind of daycare type thing. Selfishly I have a two and a half year old and so if I can find a way to get him taught at the sanctuary across the road. But so in the next five years it’d be great to see some things adapt there so that our impact can be to elevate the residents we have here stories but inevitably save you know more than what we would ever whoever we could be able to get our hands on if that makes sense.

Emily Landry (20:12)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I think too, like, I see how it would be helpful for you to have more sanctuaries throughout the United States. Like you talked about in the beginning, moving the chickens from the East Coast down, and how you had this sort of network of sanctuaries, but you almost want to have those preschoolers who then want to grow up and start their own sanctuary and help you in a totally different part of the United States, saving some of animals.

Chris Fuller-Wigg (20:49)
Yeah, and a part of our education is three pillars. It’s one, it’s educating just the general population and youth. Two is like educating veterinarians. So that’s kind of the program we have at Texas A&M. And then the third one is educating other sanctuaries. So like we’re grateful that we’ve been able to be whatever it means to be quote unquote successful. And there’s like, want to make sure we enable with people with the information we’ve learned, whether it’s, you know, documentation set up or like how to properly, you know, market your brand or something.

So working with places to allow them to be successful, because it’s tough. Animal rescues or sanctuaries find themselves failing X percentage of the time, because that’s well-meaning, kind-doing people that find themselves overextended. So how can we help that not be the result and instead guide them?

Emily Landry (21:22)
It is a struggle so many non-profits face, but you probably face in a very unique and challenging way. Because like you said earlier, you have lives depending on you in a very different way.

Chris Fuller-Wigg (21:41)
Yeah, and when you get that phone call, you want to say yes, because you feel like you’re already, you know about them, you can’t say no, you know, but then you’re overextended and then the money doesn’t come in and then you find yourself way over your toes and now, you know, now it’s not a safe space for them to be in and yeah, never want to be in that position and it’s hard not to get there almost.

Emily Landry (22:03)
So before we finish the episode, I want you to tell us how we can connect with you and the sanctuary. I would say I’m hoping my husband and I are going to get to come do the tour in the next couple of months, which would be like September-ish timeframe. It’ll probably be 110 degrees whatever day. But besides the tour, which you’ve mentioned and I think would be like such a remarkable, tangible way to get to see the property, what ways would you suggest connecting with y’all?

Chris Fuller-Wigg (22:41)
Yeah, I would say the tour plus we also have an airstream that people can now rent out at the sanctuary. So head on over to our stay option on our website. And that’s pretty fun. We had a friend that stayed here for like five days and like videoed their whole experience of a week at the sanctuary. But otherwise I would say, mean, going to our website’s great. Cause you’ll be, if there’s any kind of current events we have, like we try to host events. We have a summer kickoff this coming weekend. We’ll have a vegan barbecue and water slides and tours and bobbing for apples. But the pigs are doing it, you know, just fun ways to kind of take some holidays. So people coming out for their tours or events. But yeah, connecting with us on social media. Again, we try to use it as a platform to tell the stories of our 250 residents. So go and kind of get your daily, you know, happy juice of a little bit of happy farm animals over there. And then to support us, we have various like fundraisers throughout the year.

We have a big solar panel initiative to like get some fans moving in our barns during the summer, as well as other things we do throughout the year. So we’d love people to jump on and support some key missions like that too.

Emily Landry (23:44)
Love it. Okay, well for those listening, if you enjoyed today’s episode, please be sure to subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or listen on our website at WhitleyPenn.com backslash podcast. Thank you, Chris, for joining me again to record the podcast. I think we did better the second time though, so better storytelling. And I hope everyone has a wonderful rest of your day.

Chris Fuller-Wigg (24:03)
Nailed it.