Kristin Lloyd and her fiancé Jacob Moore are the owners of Moore Exotic Animal Ranch. They started the zoo about six years ago, and it has grown from a local curiosity into a legitimate destination for the Riverview area and beyond. “We started it from scratch together,” Lloyd said. “We started off just taking in the animals but one day decided to open for tours to teach people about the animals that call our facility home.”
That origin story — two people who just started taking in animals and let the rest grow organically — is part of what gives this place its particular character. There is no venture capital behind Moore Exotic Animal Ranch. There is no corporate hospitality consultant who signed off on the visitor flow strategy. What there is, instead, is a genuine love for animals that became too large and too purposeful to keep private.
The ranch is not trying to compete with Tampa’s Busch Gardens or Zoo Tampa. It is not trying to compete with anyone. It occupies an entirely different lane: intimate, intentional, and deeply invested in the individual animals that live there. When you visit, you are not a ticket number. You are a guest at someone’s extraordinary home.
– Source: Tampa Bay Wired
