Lazy 5 Ranch - Mooresville

About Lazy 5 Ranch

Lazy 5 Ranch is a privately owned ranch located about an hours drive from Charlotte. The ranch initially started as one man’s interest to raise exotic animals, but seeing the interest it has now turned into a ranch where everyone especially the kids can get up and close with the animals. Being close to Charlotte meant we could visit it and come back in a few hours. Read on for the experience.

Trip Insights

• Date: 5th April 2014
• Weather: Bright and Sunny
• Location: Lazy 5 Ranch, Mooresville, NC
• Distance: ~60kms from Charlotte
• Rates/Fees: $11 (Adult), $16 (Wagon Ride)

Heading to Mooresville

We started for the ranch around afternoon and after a hour and a half long drive we reached the ranch around 2pm. The scenery on either side of the road as we entered Mooresville was just beautiful and reminded us of the old time village. At the entry point we had two options either take the wagon ride or take the car inside the ranch. The next available slot for wagon ride was sometime around 4:30pm so we decided to go around the ranch in the car itself.

Missed the wagon ride

For those reading, I had hopped on to the trip without knowing anything about the place, something which I am used to now if you have read my earlier travel posts. So based on what I had heard I was expecting more of a zoo kind of environment but what totally struck me was the way it was laid out. We were seated in a car driving around a 5.5km ranch with animals walking around freely and coming up to the car windows and we could feed them freely without any worry (the animal feed was provided to us at the entry point). It took me sometime to let the fact creep in as for a person like me who has always visited zoos or national parks in India where either the animal would be in cage or I would be in a caged vehicle, this was a totally different experience.

Feeding the animals

As we moved around and feed the animal, we noticed that all the animals were ID tagged and were quite friendly. They softly took the feed provided in our hands and waited for more and moved on if we did not offer more (we had only one box of feed).

We came across a lots of birds and animals, some of the ones we came across are:

• Ostrich
• Emu
• Watusi
• Bahama Cattle
• Zebra
• Himalayan Tahr
• Nubian Goat
• Deer
• Giraffe
• Rihno
• Pigs
• Llama
• Camel

We came across the follow outside the driving areas but still inside the ranch:

• Peacock
• Macaw
• Parrot
• Pigeon
• Donkey
• Horse
• Kangaroo

The ones mentioned above are the ones I could recollect, there were many species of the some animals.

Below are some of the photos from the trip:

Overall, It was a very good experience. Must visit if you are in and around Charlotte. Kids will absolutely love it and it is very much how close one can get close to nature without stepping over it.

Note: As this is my first blog post in over 15 months I tried to keep it short and simple with minimal details so that I could get this post through rather than being lazy and not post at all :-)