A petting zoo in North Carolina may have been spreading more than just joy as of late.
Over the weekend, officials with the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services reported an outbreak of rabies centered around the Farm Adventures mobile petting zoo based in Iredell County. At least four baby goats from the zoo contracted the highly fatal infection, all of which have been euthanized. Officials are urging any people who interacted with the goats in the last month to contact their local health department to determine whether they should get preventative rabies treatment.
“Several goats at Farm Adventures have tested positive for rabies by the North Carolina State Laboratory of Public Health and may have been in direct contact with people at events while infectious,” the department stated Friday.
A disastrous adventure
According to Misty Love, the owner of Farm Adventures, the goats were kept in a pen to isolate them from any wildlife. However, in late July, the zoo discovered that a wild skunk had entered the pen and interacted with them before it was removed. The skunk didn’t appear to have bitten nor sprayed them, and the goats behaved as usual afterward, so the zoo didn’t think the incident was a serious concern. Several weeks later, however, three of the goats began to fall sick.
“It was a skunk,” Love, who has operated the zoo for a year-and-a-half, told local media outlet WSOC-TV 9 Monday. “It went through the holes. We don’t know and it’s devastating.”
The rabies vaccine is highly effective at preventing rabies in both humans and livestock. Though the vaccine isn’t officially licensed for goats, vets will often recommend and use it off-label for goats living in areas where rabies is endemic and/or if they’re expected to interact regularly with people, including at petting zoos. Unfortunately, the goats were too young to have started their shots yet, Love said. Typically, goats receive their first rabies vaccine dose (of two) between 12 weeks and six months of age.
Ultimately, four goats tested positive for the infection, which can only be confirmed post-mortem. The rest of the zoo’s animals have now been placed in quarantine and are being monitored for symptoms as a precaution. And Love says that all her animals and employees at the zoo have since gotten a rabies vaccine booster. The Iredell County Health Department says the zoo has been fully cooperative with state and county officials.
What to know
The overall risk of catching rabies from infected livestock is lower than it is from wild animals, officials say. However, since the virus is spread through saliva, and because people will often cuddle, bottle-feed, and otherwise handle baby goats closely, there’s certainly a chance zoo goers who visited the goats could have been infected, too.
Officials are looking for anyone who interacted with the goats between July 28 and August 27, 2026, to contact their local health departments. This includes people who visited Farm Adventures’ main location in Harmony, North Carolina, as well as people who attended any of the traveling events it hosted across the state over the past month.
“The petting zoo held off-site events involving children and elderly individuals across multiple counties within that time frame,” the state health department said Friday. “Organizers of these offsite events are being notified. This investigation is ongoing and additional information about potential exposure locations at public events will be released once available.”
Rabies is nearly always fatal once symptoms like confusion, hydrophobia (an aversion to water), and aggression appear. However, it usually takes weeks for these signs to emerge, and prompt post-exposure prophylaxis—a combination of the rabies vaccine and donated antibodies to the virus—is highly effective at preventing symptomatic infection.
