The Gentle Barn animal sanctuary opened in Missouri as a symbol of freedom in 2017. In March that year, six steers escaped a north St. Louis slaughterhouse, leading police on an hourslong chase through the city’s streets.
The spectacle won the animals a name — the St. Louis Six. The attention quickly became a movement to save the steers. Crowdfunding by animal rights activists in St. Louis eventually raised enough money to purchase the cattle from the slaughterhouse — and a California-based nonprofit, the Gentle Barn, agreed to create a sanctuary for them.
It seemed to be a happy ending for the animals and their fans in St. Louis. But eight years later, the Gentle Barn abruptly ended its operations in Dittmer, Missouri, under a cloud of confusion.
Volunteers watched the sanctuary they loved — and a place where some had worked for years as guides and docents — dissolve in a matter of days.
It has been a jarring retreat for a sanctuary that owed its creation to supporters in St. Louis. As former volunteers and staff deal with the fallout, anger has mixed with grief: Since October, five animals that once lived in the Missouri sanctuary have died. The sanctuary’s married co-founders, Ellie Laks and Jay Weiner, have faced increasing criticism from people they left behind.
According to former volunteers and staff, the closure of the Gentle Barn in October 2024 was a shock. The first public notice came on Oct. 25, when Laks and Weiner published a video on Facebook.
“While our California and Tennessee locations are thriving and continuing on, we must close our Missouri location,” Laks said.
Weiner said the nonprofit had been “working hard” to stay open in Missouri, “but because of the pandemic, the weather, the economy and diminished financial support, we have to follow through with this plan.”
Days after the announcement, the Gentle Barn’s nearly 30 animals were loaded on trucks and transported more than 300 miles to its sanctuary in Christiana, Tennessee.
It wasn't long after the closing that some of those animals started dying.
‘He was gentle with everybody’
More than a dozen former volunteers and staff members spoke to St. Louis on the Air about their experience in the sanctuary’s final days and the aftermath of its closing. Most requested not to be identified out of fear they could be barred from visiting the Gentle Barn’s other sanctuaries by going public with their criticisms.
Some had spent years with the sanctuary and its animals. Most said the first sign of trouble came a week before the surprise announcement of its closing: They’d received an order to prepare the sanctuary’s two horses and donkeys for transport to California.
“Everybody there, all the staff and volunteers, were doing everything we could to give the best possible life to these animals,” said former tour guide Craig Forster. “They were very well cared for and very, very loved. So it was very wrenching for us to be told that some of these animals were going to be taken away.”
That separation was only the beginning. Only days after the Gentle Barn closed and moved its animals to Tennessee, news of a death reached the former volunteers and staff.
The first to die was a pig named Penny. The Gentle Barn website maintains a page for each animal; after Penny’s death in early November, hers had been moved to the “In Memoriam” section. Her bio was updated to say that the rescued pig had “passed away suddenly in her sleep of heart failure.”
Penny had been found on a highway after falling out of a transport truck in 2017. She eventually grew to hundreds of pounds and was one of several large pigs that lived at the Gentle Barn. Penny was only a few months old when she first met volunteer Donna McCall.
“[She] was rescued out of a horrible situation,” McCall said. “That she managed to live a life where she was given love by all the visitors she had, me and other volunteers who adored her and we respected her, that was the most important thing to me. Showing her respect and having her feel it and know it.”
McCall became Penny’s docent. For years, she acted as a guide and ambassador for the rescued farm pig. But she only found out about Penny’s death as the information was passed through an informal network of former Gentle Barn volunteers.
“I was devastated. This was one of my best friends in my life. We knew each other so well, and we were a team,” she said. “There was nothing publicly stated about Penny being transported, and three days later, trying to wake her up and having her be dead.”
Over the next three months, four other animals died: Nigel the rooster, a chicken named Opal and a turkey named Hope.
In January, Gentle Barn made its first public announcement of the death of a former Missouri resident: Eddie, one of the St. Louis Six.
Forster, the former Gentle Barn tour guide, remembers Eddie as “a calming, joyful presence.”
“He'd just let you curl up against him, just when someone needs that moment of peace away from the rest of the world,” he said. “He was a real gentleman. He was gentle with everybody.”
In a Jan. 21 Facebook post, Gentle Barn said Eddie “injured his spine while innocently playing with his brothers one day, and would never walk again.” An update on the sanctuary’s website included further details: “Left with no other options, our veterinarian helped Eddie out of his body while we thanked Eddie for the privilege of knowing him, and praised him for being so resilient, brave, loving, and kind.”
The deaths of Eddie, Penny and the other animals have hit former volunteers and staff particularly hard. While grieving, Forster maintains that the deaths were preventable.
“We don't believe it would have happened if those animals were still here,” he said. “We believe that we were looking after them in the best possible way that we could.”
Last wishes
Beyond Gentle Barn co-founder Jay Weiner blaming “the pandemic, the weather, the economy and diminished financial support,” there’s been no official explanation for the sanctuary’s abrupt closure.
On Wednesday, Ellie Laks said the decision to close came down to the organization's financial struggle during and after the pandemic.
“The animals are always our first priority, and so their care must continue even if it means letting go of a location. We did that to make the organization whole,” she said. “Anyone that has run a business, they understand that sometimes really hard financial decisions have to be made, even if it impacts people, even if it causes loss and sadness.”
Laks said that she understood people felt hurt by the closure. "Unfortunately, some people's response to pain and to sadness is to lash out,” she said.
She added, “This was just as much a loss for me and Jay — more than the volunteers that called the Gentle Barn a home while we were in St. Louis.”
According to the Gentle Barn's tax filing documents in 2023, the nonprofit reported about $3 million in contributions and an additional $1.7 million from revenue generated by its visitor program and merchandise. It also reported $5.1 million in expenses.
Laks said that the sale of the former Missouri Gentle Barn has put the nonprofit on more solid financial footing with its two remaining sanctuaries in California and Tennessee. A Zillow listing for the 24-acre Dittmer farm shows the property sold in January for $600,000. That’s $200,000 more than the nonprofit paid for the farm in 2017.
That year, animal activists in St. Louis raised more than $17,000 through multiple GoFundMe campaigns. After the steers had been purchased from the Star Packing Co., the Gentle Barn leveraged public attention around the Six Louis Six to raise $400,000 to establish its Missouri expansion.
In a 2019 appearance on St. Louis on the Air, Ellie Laks credited “the generosity of the community” for the Gentle Barn’s ability to care for the St. Louis Six and dozens of other animals in the sanctuary.
“It's a wonderful partnership,” Laks added. “Every day, we're looking to the community to help us so that we can even save more lives.”
According to former volunteers and staff, Laks and Weiner rarely spent time in the Gentle Barn’s Missouri sanctuary. But the founders maintained direct command of its operations and made the final decisions on animal care. This arrangement led to increasing tension with key staff members.
In the weeks before the Oct. 25 closure announcement, the Gentle Barn lost its location manager, Christine Seacrist, and Liz Wiley, the sanctuary’s animal treatment specialist. Both declined to comment for this story but confirmed that they had signed nondisclosure agreements with the Gentle Barn.
There were other deaths at Missouri’s Gentle Barn during its existence — that was expected, volunteers and staff told St. Louis on the Air, since many of the animals had been bred to grow quickly to massive size before being slaughtered.
However, the deaths of the five former Missouri residents in just four months are raising concerns among former volunteers about the nonprofit’s policies around animal care and euthanasia — which the sanctuary describes as the act of “helping” animals out of their body. The nonprofit follows a particular directive when evaluating animals at the end of their lives.
The requirement involves Laks’ professed ability to communicate with animals.
The Gentle Barn’s euthanasia policy is found in the sanctuary’s standard operating procedure, a document that St. Louis on the Air obtained and verified for authenticity.
The policy states that unwell animals under the sanctuary’s care may be treated with “veterinary care, getting second opinions when necessary” as well as “acupuncture, massage therapy, chiropractic care, nutritional supplements [and] holding therapy.”
The policy then goes on to list “energy healing, animal communication, and lots of love to give that animal every chance of recovering.”
If those measures fail, the policy states: “Call Ellie so she can communicate with the animal to get their last wishes. She will confirm that the animal wants to be helped out of their body and whether they want something before they go.”
Laks is not a veterinarian. On Wednesday, she said that her ability to communicate with animals “is only a tool to assist our veterinarians, and it's just one of the many, many ways we care for the animals.”
Laks is referenced numerous times in the sanctuary’s operating document. Staff members are directed to alert her if an animal loses weight or changes diet. She maintained that the sanctuary’s animal care is led by its veterinary staff.
“We use acupuncture, chiropractic massage therapy to assist and to help,” she added. “Sometimes, I weigh in with animal communication. If the animal has a specific request, we all work together as a team to care for these animals.”
Laks maintains a consulting business in which she offers her abilities to relay spoken messages from sick, missing or departed animals. She charges $200 per hour and requires a photo of an animal looking into the camera. According to her website, “Ellie will connect with your animal and when Ellie is done communicating with your animal (approximately 30 mins), she will call you to tell you what they said.”
Saying goodbye
The Gentle Barn’s final day of operation arrived Oct. 27. The parking lot swelled with more than a hundred visitors. Volunteers said they scrambled to find the time and transportation to see their favorite animals one last time before they all departed for Tennessee.
Weiner, the co-founder, was there that Sunday as well. According to multiple people who witnessed the interaction, after the visitors had gone home, he attempted to defuse the day’s tension while addressing a group of volunteers.
Volunteer Brandi Cross had hoped he would finally explain why the Gentle Barn was closing. She said that didn’t happen.
“Jay said that it was an employment issue, and it was confidential, and he couldn't tell us. He repeated that several times,” Cross said. “There was a lot of tears. There was a lot of anger in that meeting.”
Multiple former volunteers also raised the apparent lack of fundraising to save Missouri’s Gentle Barn. The nonprofit regularly sends text and email alerts to raise money for emergencies like flooding and medical care. The only such alert for Missouri’s Gentle Barn came on Oct. 25, the day its closing was announced. It asked recipients for help raising $75,000 to move the Missouri animals to Tennessee and California.
The apparent lack of effort to save Missouri’s Gentle Barn has led former volunteers like Cross to wonder what went wrong. Was it a matter of money, employment, animal care or something else?
Her frustration extends to the consequences of the nonprofit’s abrupt transport of so many animals to new locations. She finds herself refreshing the sanctuary’s website “hoping and praying there's not another one of our animals on it that has passed away.”
“We're angry that we don't feel there's adequate staff in Tennessee to handle this many animals coming down there at the last minute,” she continued. “I'm not finding any fault in anybody from Tennessee. I'm finding fault in the founders — this should have been planned better and with more care and concern for the safety of the animals. And it wasn't.”
For former staff member Craig Forster, there’s another layer to the heartbreak. He asked a question that only co-founders Laks and Weiner can answer.
“If they thought there was a problem coming, why not tell us that? Why not speak to the people involved and see if we can help?” he said. “Because everyone here knows people, everyone works for different companies. Everyone could try. The people of St. Louis raised money to rescue those animals in the first place. Why not give those people the chance to see if they can save that location too?”
Asked to respond to those concerns and the apparent absence of a dedicated campaign to keep the Gentle Barn in Missouri, Laks on Wednesday instead praised the nonprofit’s “wonderful development team."
"It was very evident that holding onto three locations was not possible for us,” she said. "We had to make some very quick, very hard decisions to save our organization. And that is what we did.”
The Gentle Barn Missouri began with the inspiration of the St. Louis Six, but in its eight-year lifespan it became home to around 50 animals, all rescued from abuse or slaughter or abandonment. It impacted the lives of thousands of human visitors, giving them a chance to experience the peace the animals had found there.
Rion Harper, a former volunteer, said he saw it happen every Sunday: People arrived at the Gentle Barn as curious tourists. They left changed.
“We had some people come that would tell us they never ate pork again because they met Rosie or Petunia, and that never would have happened,” he said. “It's not about changing everybody to what you believe in. But if you can make a dent of change in a positive way, no matter what it is, you're doing something right.”
To explore the full investigation of the closure of Missouri’s Gentle Barn, including statements from Ellie Laks and multiple former volunteers, listen to St. Louis on the Air on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube, or click the play button below.
“St. Louis on the Air” brings you the stories of St. Louis and the people who live, work and create in our region. The show is produced by Miya Norfleet, Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha and Alex Heuer. Jada Jones is our production assistant. The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr. Greg Munteanu mixed and edited much of this episode. Send questions and comments about this story to talk@stlpr.org.
