You Otter Try This – Otter Swim & Tour At Barn Hill Preserve In Louisiana

I know, I know, I say it every time I meet a new animal but… BEST DAY EVER!

I went for an Otter Swim at Barn Hill Preserve in Ethel, Louisiana (about 30 miles north of Baton Rouge). You get a 2-hour tour of the preserve and then have an hour-long otter swim experience – it’s about 35-45 minutes with the otters and time to change before and after. It cost $154 (plus tax) for the full experience. This was a Christmas gift from my stepdad and it was worth every penny.

One note, if you use Google Maps it’ll guide you to a property across the street where you’ll be greeted by a boisterous black dog. If you’ve just turned onto LA-955 from Overton Ford/Battle Road, the GPS will tell you to turn right to go to the preserve. However, you want to go up a little further and it’s on the left with a large sign.

First you go on a tour of the preserve. There were 10 people in my tour. I arrived right at 2pm and the tour was literally starting, so get there 10-15 minutes early. There are a number of animals – both farm and exotic – that live at Barn Hill Preserve. From the questions I asked it’s a farm that’s owned by a family and has grown into the animal preserve over time. Animals include a camel, potbellied pigs, parrots, two lynx, two serval cats (and a newly arrived baby serval), Asian small-clawed otters, sloths, a striped hyena, baby kangaroos and many more. BONUS ANIMALS are always a plus!!

It seems that a good number of the animals that have come to the preserve are from private people who thought they could handle more exotic animals, didn’t realize how long they lived (parrots can live over 40 years) or thought they’d stay smaller (like the pot-bellied pigs). Others have been brought in as part of the usual moving and mating of domesticated animals as happens to keep zoo populations healthy.

The tour covers a walk around the property, so wear boots if it’s been raining. There’s a good bit of land available for the preserve. They seem to be growing at Barn Hill at a quick rate and therefore are doing a lot of construction and seem to have a lot of improvements happening all the time. They’re in the process of building and expanding enclosures for the lynx, hyena, parrots and baby otters. They renovated the pool for the otter swim experience with new stairs and it’s now HEATED! (Apparently Pebbles and Splash are divas now and prefer not to swim in anything less than 68° – hahaha – same girls!)

Once the outside tour finishes, you head into the sloth encounter area. This was a big surprise to me – I had no idea this was part of the otter swim experience. What a bonus! We got to feed sloths their snacks (with safety rules about petting and watching your fingers) and hold and pet A BABY SLOTH!!!

Once Forest was safely away a few other fun animals were brought out to meet and greet.

Here’s a short video of what the sloth encounter was like.

At the end of the session all the beautiful animals were left to their snacks, naps and more. Most of the group left at that time, leaving 3 of us to do the otter swim. We went upstairs to change (another area where they’re doing renovations is to the bathroom and office areas) and came down ready to do all the swimming. At this time I still didn’t realize it was going to be heated. I was prepared to freeze for 40 minutes to swim with otters; I was so excited when I got in and it was warm!

For those that don’t swim, it’s really more “otter” than “swim.” The otters do the swimming. You can stand in the pool. I’m 5’3″ and it was up to my mid chest. You can also sit on the stairs if you’re anxious about the depth of the water. I didn’t have a need to put my head under at all, but you could probably wear goggles to go under and see them swim underwater as well.

Pebbles and Splash just swim around. They jump on and off you. They play with each other and anything else they can find. They’re provided with toys and pebbles, but if you bring your own camera expect that it’ll become a toy too. You’ll see in the video a few times where you become part of the otter action. Jamie answered questions for us and generally chatted about the preserve and otters.

Because they’re clawsome – check out these otter feetsies close ups!

If you’re an eagle-eyed otter watcher, you may notice that some of the girls’ fur is bubbly-looking (and not in the usual otter-breathing-bubbles way). This is either from the warm water or newspaper in their enclosure. The team at Barn Hill is investigating it. It’s not a skin condition or anything, it just makes parts of their fur matted a little more when it should be silky.

Here’s the video of my otterly amazing experience!

Final Thoughts

Overall, I had a wonderful experience. I’m excited to come back in the future to see the expanded enclosures for the animals at Barn Hill Preserve. As we’ve mentioned before, we prefer animals to be in the wild, but if they’re in captivity (as many will be now that they’ve been bred there) then we want to see them as happy and healthy as possible. Everyone seemed very happy and healthy and any possible issues, like the otter fur matting, is being addressed.

If you want to swim with otters, you just “gotter” consider a visit to Barn Hill Preserve and watch this space because they’re expanding to Delaware as well when one of the owners returns from helping the animals affected by the bush fires in Australia. Shout out to Jamie for a wonderful tour and overall experience. Also, thank you to the other couple in the otter swim who gave me permission to include them in my videos/pictures as it would’ve made editing and filming “a lotter” harder.

A few more bonus animal pictures from the tour because… why not!?

While I wait for my next animal experience, it’s time to update my tattoo with otter prints…