Bedford Sanctuary Rescues Animals In Need Of A Loving Place To Call Home

Butterfly Field Farm is like a hall on a college campus: a mix of personalities living together and sharing common spaces. 

None of those personalities are perfect, but the communal living space develops friendships and builds comradery. Residents learn how to live together and love one another through similarities and differences. 

Despite the similarities, Butterfly Field Farms, located in Bedford, Virginia, has one important difference from a college dorm or hall. The personalities do not belong to people. They belong to rescued animals. 

As an animal shelter, they bring in horses, cows, cats and bunnies. The shelter cares for them all with love and compassion. 

Their mission includes two central ideas. First, they want to give these animals a new home and a better life. Secondly, they want to change people’s hearts so they don’t see animals as things to be slaughtered but as creatures who deserve to be cared for.

Ted Kamprath, who runs Butterfly Field Farm, founded it in 2019 after his family discovered the need for such a place in the Lynchburg area. Since then, they have built an expansive farm housing all kinds of hooves and paws.

They started out small, contacting people to try and find animals in need of a home. But since then, their reputation has spread.

“Now people just contact us. All we did was get the ball rolling and then it snowballed,” Kamprath said. “We’re up to 70-something animals in a two-year period.”

The animals live together in a friendly, multi-species environment. Seeing all the animals playing together warms visitors’ hearts,” Kamprath said.

“Little things like watching a cow and a goat play,” he said. “It’s good for the soul. Especially when the blind cows go out together, you know? It’s just phenomenal.”

Fredrick and Richard are two blind cows that live on the farm. Like them, many of the animals come in with preexisting medical conditions that require special treatment or diets. But the people at Butterfly Field Farm make sure that these animals can still live their lives to the fullest.

Jack, a goat with a single horn, is waiting to join the herd of goats in the other field. For now, he lives with the sheep and cows. In the meantime, he and the other goats headbutt through the wire fence to get acquainted. 

In the complex process of keeping all animals’ diets and temperaments aligned, mixing and matching species like this is common at Butterfly Field Farm.

All of these animals were in dire need of rescue and relocation when brought to Butterfly Field Farm. The terrible conditions so many animals live in are the reason why people at Butterfly Field Farm do what they do. 

“There (were) 26 pigs in a horse stall,” Kamprath said. “These guys had never seen the light of day.”

Sometimes the stakes are even higher than rescuing animals from unhealthy environments. Two donkeys, a mother and her foal, were in a kill pen when Ted drove to North Carolina to bring them to Butterfly Field Farm. They live there now with other playmates, an open field and plenty of food.

Butterfly Field Farm welcomes every animal with open arms no matter where they came from. 

Blevins is a feature reporter.