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Local farm is Living Nativity animal source
Area man provides variety of animals for live Nativity scenes
BOARDMAN
A camel grazing on a lawn along the busy U.S. Route 224 shopping strip heralds the Christmas season and captures the attention of passing motorists, who honk their horns and give a thumbs-up signal; and many of them stop to visit.
The camel’s presence there doesn’t represent a commercial promotion, but rather, invites people to pause amid the retail hustle and bustle and reflect on the religious meaning of the season.
The occasion is the annual Journey to Bethlehem Live Nativity at Disciples Christian Church, 565 Boardman-Canfield Road.
That event, which took place on a recent Saturday, featured a 10-year-old, 1,200-plus-pound dromedary camel named Shadrach, who was grazing on the church’s front lawn and eagerly posing for close-up photos with visitors.
The camel’s handler, Dwayne Felger, dressed as a Wise Man, also brought other friendly animals to the event from his 10-acre Green Township Farm, including a miniature cow, a miniature donkey, a Nubian goat and a pygmy goat.
Other animals living on the farm include sheep, yaks, llamas, alpacas, kangaroo and reindeer.
For Felger, who also is known to many as the owner of the Canfield Collision auto body shop, it was one of about 30 Christmas-related events, at which he and his animals appear annually in the Mahoning Valley and across Northeast Ohio.
“There are so many events for kids with Santa Claus, and this is a nice change from the whole Santa scene,” said Susan Malysa of Boardman, who attended the Journey to Bethlehem event with her son, Logan, 10, and daughter, Addison, 4.
“They get to experience the birth of Christ, not just in a story and reading the Bible, but actually walking through it,” Malysa said of her children.
“The kids enjoyed it so much, we came back,” she said of the event, which she and her children attended last year.
“Probably, a good chunk of the people who come in, come in because they see a camel on [Route] 224,” said Matt Kluchar, the church’s associate pastor. “After their tour is over, they take pictures with the camel. They go pet the camel. The whole thing’s geared to be a family event.”
“It really adds a lot to the authenticity of it to have the live animals,” he added.
The animals appear with about 50 costumed parishioners as groups of visitors take an interactive guided tour inside and outside the church.
Felger said his appearances with the animals aren’t intended as money-making ventures, and that the fees he charges simply help him defray the costs of feeding and caring for the animals.
“They’re not cheap to purchase or maintain,” he said of the animals.
“If it wasn’t for the fact that I have to pay for the feed and the housing and the vet bills and the insurance, I would do it for free, just to see people’s faces” exude happiness in the presence of the animals, he said.
“I’ve had elderly women in wheelchairs that have never been able to see a camel. And I could walk him up. He’ll lay his head right in their laps, so they can pet him,” Felger said of Shadrach.
Awareness of his animals spreads by word of mouth, Felger said, adding he doesn’t advertise the availability of the animals for Christmas-related occasions and other events.
Having participated in Christmas-related events for the past 15 years, Felger and his animals also have appeared twice in recent years in New York City on NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.”
On the first occasion, Felger appeared with a single-humped dromedary camel and a two-humped Bactrian camel.
On the second occasion, he appeared with a baby dromedary camel, a baby yak and a baby wildebeast.
Among this year’s local appearances by Felger and his animals have been Santa’s Winter Barn at the Mill Creek MetroParks Farm in Canfield, the arrivals of Santa and his reindeer at Dairy Queens in Columbiana, Cornersburg and Austintown, and a Santa and reindeer event at Agland in Canfield.
Two camels, a donkey, a miniature cow and several sheep and goats will appear next Sunday in the annual Living Nativity at Zion Lutheran Church in Cornersburg.
“We do some Easter events, and we also do exotic petting zoos,” Felger said of himself and his animals, which include large toads and snakes.
Living Nativity animals must be calm amid crowds of strangers, “people-friendly” and obedient to handlers’ commands, said Felger, who trains the animals.
“I work with them all year, getting them used to people, walking them around people, walking them up and down by a road, so they get used to cars,” Felger explained.
“I train them all to walk on a lead, listen to my commands, and load in and out of the trailer,” he said.
“When I get home, I back the trailer into the driveway. I open the back door to the trailer. They all run to their barn stalls. I open their barn stalls. They go in,” he added.
“You see how big he is. If he doesn’t listen, who’s in trouble?” Felger asked, referring to Shadrach.