Smoky Mountain Deer Farm & Exotic Petting Zoo

The pony rides were very reasonable, $9 for 3 laps around a pretty long loop. The parent gets to lead the child’s pony too, so it was a lot of fun. The petting zoo was nice as well, we couldn’t get in to the goat pen because there were so many and they kept trying to escape when I was going in 😂 The few people that were in the pen had goats all over them. I wish we could have gotten closer to the bunnies than just through the spaces in the fence. There was a great variety of animals and the only ones that you could not feed were the kangaroos. Definitely get some apples for the horses, ponies and camel.

We loved how hands on this petting zoo was to all ages! We went on a trip with about 50 other people. Everyone had a GREAT time! The feed is reasonably priced and you can feed all but two animals on the property. It was kinda sad to see how the horse looked so malnourished but I am thinking he was old and rescued. We loved letting the kids ride the horse, but were not happy about waiting 15 plus minutes for an employe to show up so the kids could ride. We waited and waited, as the employee took whoever's paper he had in hand. We were not a big fan of others riding for 10 minutes while we all waited and waited for the other 6 to get done before our kids. We were there waiting for 15 minutes before the other parents walked up to the riding area. We would still recommend this petting zoo! P.S. dont stand to close the the fence outside where a few goats are located, because they LOVE paper!!! LoL

This is a lot of fun for everyone. Look at the pictures and you can see the wide variety of animals available at this petting zoo. You can buy a large cup of healthy food cheap to feed the animals. They love coming to the fence to eat out of your hand or from the ground if that's where you put the food. I was amazed at how gentle most of the animals are when they ate our of our extended hand. There is a level of excitement in the air because people were loving the experience. We want to go back and do it again. Of course the baby goats are light and easy to hold for great picture opportunities since you can enter their pen.

We love this place! Fun petting zoo where you can feed and interact with all kinds of animals. Our son loved holding the baby goats and feeding the camels. We took tons of great pictures. Admission is under $15 for adults and a large feed cup is just $3.25. We didn’t check out the riding stables but we heard others visitors talking about how great that was too. Great deal and lots of fun!

We did both the zoo and the riding:
Petting Zoo - a lot of fun for the little kids. we were the first group of the day so the animals were really excited (I'll say men probably want to be careful in the goat pen as a lot of them jump and try to put their front hooves in exactly the wrong place). The baby emu was so cute! you get a big cup of food given the price so we were able to feed a little to every animal for a fair cost. If you have kids under 10 this is definitely worth a visit
Riding - trail was gorgeous and horses were generally well behaved. Guide was very nice and good with the kids/first-timers. I'd say maybe avoid if it looks like the weather is going to turn on you though: they send you out regardless which if it was just rain wouldn't be a big deal but we had a big thunderclap/lightning strike on the trail and 4 of the 7 horses reared up/bolted. Fortunately no one was thrown/hurt but it was as much luck as anything.
Overall though both activities were great.

While looking through one of the discount coupon books, we found a discount coupon for the petting zoo. Our daughter loves deer and saw we could feed and pet deer along with horses, camels, zebra, emus, goats, and a whole lot more. I looked it up on line and decided to do it. It was one of the main highlights of our trip. Our teenage son didn’t want to go because it as “childish”, and even he admitted he had a great time! The price of admission does not cover the food, but the food is very reasonable to buy ($3.50ish) and refills are half off. The staff was extremely helpful and friendly, and they had staff making upgrades throughout the park. Highly recommended!

Tip: Don’t wear good clothing of shoes, especially on a wet day.

Had a great time on the hour trail ride. Candace was a wonderful guide! She was very considerate of the horses and took good care of myself and my daughter. Definitely would recommend calling ahead of time to make reservations as they are taking smaller groups out.

We checked out the Deer Farm on the last day of our trip. This turned out to be one of our boys favorite stops! There’s a coupon online/in the coupon books. It opened at 10 and we got there around 11am, so we had to wait in line for about 15 minutes or so. The main parking area was full, so we kept driving down the one-way gravel drive, passing many cars parked along the side until we found room to park as well.
I believe one of the owners(never caught her name, but she said she’s there every day, all day, so…) were standing outside talking with all the visitors, sharing information about the animals, covering the rules, keeping the line moving as people left(the gift shop is smaller and that’s also where you pay admission, so she was keeping things flowing without being crowded).
We purchased 2 of the larger cups of food and 4 apples(deer/elk) which were sliced which made it nicer for little ones to feed, because if they were whole, the deer would take it in one bite; this way, they got to feed ‘more’.
There were a bunch of goats you could go in the pen with to pet and hug, lots of fallow deer to interact with, and the camels, zonkey, watusi, and elk were pretty cool too.
We spent about an hour and a half in the zoo/farm.

We did a 45 minute horse ride with a 2 and 5 year old. My five year old rode by herself up by the guide and I wore the two year old in a front carrier. The trails were beautiful in May…the trees would sometimes break to allow views of the mountains. Our guide, John was great at explaining what we needed to do to “steer,” go faster, slower or stop the horse as we had never rode before. The horses knew what to do…we didn’t need to do much. We also visited the petting farm and the kids had a great time feeding the animals. It had been raining so we didn’t go in with the goats because we didn’t want to get muddy, but a lot of people were. Highlight of our trip.

This place was nice and outside of the hustle of the city but still pretty close (20 min drive from pigeon forge). The staff were super friendly and helpful providing attraction info and being knowledgeable about the zoo animals. The animals are used to people and love being fed, petted and holding baby goats was so adorable. Camels, kangaroo, emu’s, elk, horses, ponies, llamas and more. This was our first time seeing a Zonkey (such a sweetheart)!
The zoo was smaller than I anticipated but decent pricing and relaxing 😊, perfect afternoon trip. You can buy feed in souvenir cups (22oz-32oz) to feed the animals and apple slices ($.50c) for the camels. Really hope they grow bigger and give more animals a home ❤️ some of the animals are rescues and this is such a great place to support. Would recommend, especially for children.