Thank you! We are so excited you found us!
There is so much to tell new folks! Here is our Top 10…
Hello! We receive a TON of inquiries - reaching out through all the fancy phone and computer ways and that is SO EXCITING! But I’m not doing a great job responding. So here is the Top Ten list I want you all to know…
1: Thank you for the inquiry! I’m so happy you found us!
2: Cheyne Ranch our home. We live here, this is our home on 5 acres, these are our personal animals, who are also part of our family. We are a family of 6 (now 7!), dad, mom + 4! homeschooled teenagers + an awesome bonus kid.
Cheyne Ranch is a passion project. It has evolved over the past 8 years from creating a place for our 4 children to grow up, to building a barn to take care of a couple retired horses, to welcoming a special needs adult class to our barn once a week, to now we operate as a full time education and therapy barn.
We aim to be an inclusive and accessible way for all people to learn about animal care and connection. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and our mission guides us and our vision drives us each day. More about our story can be found here.
3: I’m difficult to reach: I (Sally) am the main instructor, the curriculum designer, the business administrator, the complaints & billing department, the failing accountant, the volunteer coordinator, employee manager, the haaaaaay manager, feed manager, scheduler, the website designer, and I really really am not good at getting on the phone. I’m SO MUCH better at email and text. Although sometimes texts get lost 85 messages down. Emails are easier to manage believe it or not. Actually…
4: IN-PERSON is the BEST way to see our location, meet our animals, meet a few of our workers, is to schedule a Family Visit.
We don’t charge an annual registration fee or orientation fee, so family visits are required for first time guests before you can secure a spot on our lesson schedule.
Family visits serve a way to see where we are, who we are, how we are - an orientation, a safety briefing, and just a great way to spend time together with our animals. Family visits are just you and your kids! (and any other adults you want to bring).
Family visits are a total of $50 for the first 2 kids (adults are free) and can be scheduled online Family Visits — Cheyne Ranch
5: LESSONS, CLASSES & CAMPS!! (Our programs generally sell out)
🦄 FULL Classes, the following classes are full for FALL 2024:
🤠 AVAILABLE Classes!
🤠 Wednesday AM Equine Bridges - this is a mini Nature Club - but has a group therapy approach with our amazing Mental Health therapist intern, Karah. This is a passion project for us and gets to the heart of why we work so hard to share all this with our community.
🤠 Wednesday PM Afterschool Nature club. What is up with these openings? I think it has something to do with most of our previous students aging up into middle school ( I'm not getting older - just they are, I'm not crying - you're crying.).
🤠 (Adaptive) Horseback riding lessons & PALS: There a few spots remaining - we offer lessons Mon / Wed / Fri morning & afterschool. Friday evenings & Saturday mornings are full:) We follow an amazing mounted & unmounted curriculum, we document each lesson, and our instructors all have over 1,000 hours of training, and are in current lessons for their advanced selves ;) Ask me what adaptive means. 🤠
6: AGES:
YOUNG KIDS: As much as we LOVE babies, toddlers & preschoolers, currently the only classes for little tiny people is PALS or a Family Visits! We have plans for future classes - but not quite yet.
ELEMENTARY AGE KIDS: About 60% of the kids in our Cheyne Ranch programs are between the ages of 6 - 12. We love the elementary & middle school age kids. What a great time to help kids learn about compassion, responsibility, practice a little work ethic and succeed at pushing through hard things! There is so much to learn here.
TEENAGERS: We love teenagers! The Cheyne Family has 5! teenagers. Whew. Yes, you read that right. You will see most of them here working with us. We do try and put our teenage students’ horseback riding lessons and PALS on Friday evenings. But you will also find teen students & volunteers here on Monday & Wednesday evenings, as well as Saturday mornings.
ADULTS: Adults come here too! We have 2! different classes of special needs adults who have regularly scheduled programs. We are also happy to teach adults with special needs PALS or horseback riding lessons.
7: PROGRAMS! Yes, there are several. I want to help you find the right fit. You will love it here.
🐎 Helpful links! 🐎
🦄 Overview - Compare programs (scroll down): chra.us/p
🦄 Family visits schedule online: http://chra.us/f
🦄 Interest List: http://chra.us/i
🦄 Horseback riding lessons: chra.us/hbr
🦄 PALS: chra.us/pals
🦄 Nature club: chra.us/nc
🦄 Equine Bridges: chra.us/eb
🦄 Kids Night Out: http://chra.us/kno
🦄 Donate: http://chra.us/give
🦄 24-25 Calendar: http://chra.us/c
9: CALENDAR: Our lessons run on a 3 semester calendar and that calendar is published here!
Fall - 16 weeks
Spring - 16 weeks
Summer - 8 weeks
10: Join us! or contact us! or checkout our Amazon wishlist! or lots of things - but this is only a Top 10 and we have reached the end:
Still have questions? No problem! Please see my contact info below. I do love talking about Cheyne Ranch.
🤠There are 2 next steps, the recommended order is… it depends:
🤠 Sign up for our interest list and we will contact you!
🤠 Schedule a Family Visit to come see us!
Thank you for reading this far! We do love our community so much.
Sally Ann Cheyne
Founder & President
Cheyne Ranch, Inc.
nonprofit 501(c)(3)
Located in Oviedo, FL
Call / Text: (407) 205-7744
email: Sally@CheyneRanch.com
Website: www.CheyneRanch.com
Facebook: facebook.com/CheyneRanch
Instagram: instagram.com/CheyneRanch
Cheyne Ranch is a nonprofit that provides a safe, inclusive and accessible way for people of all abilities to learn about animal care & connections.
We serve our local community through providing scholarships to our lesson programs, caring for the many farm animals that have been donated to us, and advocating for inclusive, accessible experiences for all individuals. Please donate and help us with our mission: chra.us/give
July Newsletter
Our July Newsletter just went out via email! There are so many great things to share:
our summer recap
t-shirt fundraiser
Equine Bridges is registering now!
Fall classes sign-up
Year calendar posted
Donations
Read more here. Sign up to be included on future newsletters here:
Fall 2024 Classes!
tl;dr If you would like to be scheduled in a timeslot for our fall weekly programs, please complete this 3 minute google form: Google Form
**Unless you are a long time returning student (thank you!) and we talked about it already - then I just keep you in your same time spot
Read more:
Hello everyone! Happy July!
Summer Recap
The summer is flying by, we have just completed Week 7 of our 8-week summer session.
**Then we give the animals and humans a well-deserved 3-week break from July 29 - August 19 (see our calendar)
We also completed 5 weeks of summer camps that were absolutely amazing.
Checkout our summer recap photo album. **I am still adding more photos
Fall Session Sign-ups!!
It's already time to start thinking about the fall session. We are so thrilled to continue our PALS, Adaptive Horseback Riding lessons, Nature Club, Farmyard Explorers, Equine Bridges and Treasures programs. Scheduling 80+ families a week into our program spots is like working on a giant puzzle that I (genuinely) look forward to.
The fall session is two 8-week sessions (16 weeks August 19 - December 21).
The updated Cheyne Ranch calendar with our 2024-2025 session dates can be found here: calendar
Our prices remain the same: $400 for each 8 week session of Cheyne Ranch programs
**Equine Bridges, Farmyard Explorers and Treasures run on separate calendars and have different rates
Here is the important part of this post:
If you would like to be scheduled in a timeslot for our fall weekly programs, please complete this 3 minute google form: Google Form
Google Form (or copy and paste this link into a browser window: https://forms.gle/6i47dhm1g3tM7Hxa7)
If you are a new family - please understand completing this form is not a guarantee of a lesson time. We are so fortunate to have full programs and a waiting list. We do have some openings and we would love to get you in!
Helpful Links:
Thank you for being the best part of this incredible community!!
Sally Ann Cheyne
Founder & President
Cheyne Ranch, Inc.
nonprofit 501(c)(3)
Located in Oviedo, FL
Call / Text: (407) 205-7744
email: Sally@CheyneRanch.com
Website: www.CheyneRanch.com
Facebook: facebook.com/CheyneRanch
Instagram: instagram.com/CheyneRanch
Cheyne Ranch is a nonprofit that provides a safe, inclusive and accessible way for people of all abilities to learn about animal care & connections.
We serve our local community through providing scholarships to our lesson programs, caring for the many farm animals that have been donated to us, and advocating for inclusive, accessible experiences for all individuals.
Please donate and help us with our mission: chra.us/donate
Volunteers needed this summer!
Hello families who have a child interested in volunteering this summer at Cheyne Ranch!
Did you know our summer camps are 50% - 75% less expensive than other competitive camps? As a nonprofit, it is important we offer our services affordably to our community. We rely on volunteers, they help keep our programs running safely, smoothly and add lots of fun.
More info about our volunteer requirements and expectations here
There are 2 action items:
Please have both you and your child read the info on this website (chra.us/vol), make sure you both understand the expectations. I am happy to talk to anyone with any questions.
Let me know what your child's volunteer availability is this summer. There are 2 ways to sign up:
Visit the scheduling website (scroll down) and sign up your child (you can click on recurring dates so you don't have to repeat the sign up process)
Email me the dates and I am happy to sign up your child (the scheduling system is a little confusing).
Below are screenshots of the dates we need volunteers.
Almost everyday the morning shift is available: 8:45 AM - 1:15 PM
If you are only available for a partial shift - that is ok too! Just let me know.
Friday afternoons the afternoon shift is 4:30 PM - 8:00 PM
Summer Camp dates are listed here
Please let me know if you have any questions - we are excited to see you all this summer!
2024 Spring Chickens! Baby Chicks - Part 4
Baby chick update! We have 26 baby chicks at the moment. I started off thinking we needed about 8 new baby chicks. And we ended up with 26. That is classic "chicken math."
Here is a breakdown:
4 of Falcon's blue eggs hatched on April 15th! There is 1 named Chipmunk, I'll let you guess which one that is
5 of Einstein's white eggs hatched on April 15th! We are hoping her babies are just like her previous baby chick - the famous Captain Sparkles!
15 baby white leghorn chicks arrived in the mail (via USPS) on April 16th!
1 Bonus / Charity chicken arrived from Meyer Hatchery on April 16th!
Also - photo of our chickens as of April 1, 2024. There are 29 adult chickens in this photo.
Captain Sparkles has been sitting on a nest of eggs and 1 of her baby chicks hatched!! Well, it was a brown egg actually - but she was sitting on it. It hatched on Tuesday, April 23rd! We put it in our chicken brooder, because it was randomly cold Tuesday evening
2024 Spring Chickens! Baby Chicks - Part 3
Monday, April 15th update: 10 of our eggs HATCHED!! 5 eggs from Falcon, 5 eggs from Einstein. The 5 baby chicks from Falcon are all different looking, 2 black, 2 brown, and 1 looks like a chipmunk! The 5 baby chicks from Einstein all look almost identical - they are yellow chicks with 5 toes and bright orange feet. We are REALLY hoping Einstein’s baby chicks grow up and look like Captain Sparkles! Or at least I hope they have her very friendly personality!
Here is a link to some videos of the baby chicks hatching - it was pretty incredible to watch. It takes a few hours to hatch. They come out very wet. It reminded me of baby turtles the way they flopped around while they figured out their footing. Within an hour or so of hatching - they were up walking. Different chicks had different energy levels after hatching.
Here is a 4 minute video of one of Einstein’s eggs actually hatching: Click here
2024 Spring Chickens! Baby Chicks - Part 2
Incubator update: We rechecked the egg growing activity on Monday (which was Day 15) and we have 7 eggs that are definitely still viable. They will start hatching this Sunday or Monday. the fabulous nature club kids and I moved the incubator out to the tack room - into the baby chick area actually. The tack room is much more conducive for students to observe baby hatching activity - much better than my living room.
2024 Spring Chickens! Baby Chicks - Part 1
Do you ever look at your pet chicken and think, "I sure wish there was more of you?"
It all started because we are all in love with this chicken named Captain Sparkles. And she happens to be the offspring of one of our other most favorite chickens - Einstein! And Einstein happens to be one of our best egg layers. And in a long story, the rooster around here is (probably) the offspring of the dad that was half the creation of Captain Sparkles... I can explain better in person if needed
So then I did a lot of research and purchased an incubator. And now we are on day 8! And 13 - 15 eggs might hatch! (out of 22).
I'll keep you posted. We are all kind of obsessed around here.
