When he needed to finance his seminary education, Mike Smith, of Jack-A-Roo’s Bennett’s Wallabies in Swansea, Ill., began raising wallabies. “Raising and selling the animals paid for my doctorate work,” Smith says. “Then it paid for vacations and little extras along the way.”
“Fifteen years ago, I was raising ferrets just for fun and enjoyed them,” Smith says. “We were struggling and needed some extra income. We live in goat country, and someone had included a pallet of wallabies from New Zealand along with a shipment of goats. I wanted them but I couldn’t afford them, so I asked a friend if he wanted to go into the wallaby business. He said yes, and I’ve been making money and having fun with it ever since.”
(Excerpted from an Inc.com article about exotic pets)
