gator chateau

Fun to hold a baby gator. Nice area. Worth the stop. The staff was polite and knowledgable. They gave me a map and called a local museum for me to make sure they were open.

The place is staffed by very friendly volunteers. Two of the volunteers I met were former grade school teachers, and one grad student from the local university. They teach you all about the alligators before they let you hold them and take photos with them. Everything is free of charge, but I bought a t-shirt to support the place. I was happy to have visited!

If holding an alligator is on your bucket list, you should visit Gator Chateau. Take the time to get a good picture of the gators. It is a a special moment you will want to record. They are very cute babies. Wouldn't want to pet an adult!!!

Free and fun! We touched different sizes of gators and learned so much. There's a visitor center here as well with local info. You don't want to miss this quick stop.

Free, clean, friendly & knowledgeablejust remember Friday afternoons in summer is feeding time Definitely stopping back to see that!

While traveling across country my son kept seeing signs for alligator places and lo and behold we just happened to spend the night in Jennings. The lady at the hotel gave us directions and my son got to hold two different alligators and of course we had to buy some teeth! This is a wonderful place and it's free!

A friend recommended us to go. It's off of I-10. Free. Small, but definitely a wonderful experience.

My husband and I were traveling to New Orleans from Houston with an 18 month old and had "hold an alligator" on our bucket list of things to do. Just as we were ready for lunch, we saw a billboard advertising Gator Chateau in Jennings. This solidified that it would be our next stop. Located in the Oil and Gas Park, this free attraction was a great place to stop and stretch our legs. There is an area where 6 or more alligators were sunning themselves next to a little room where inside, a very informative gal allowed us to hold and pet a baby alligator named Alfonse. Our little guy was enthralled with being so close to the tiny creature. All of the workers were very friendly and the location also has picnic spots available with a great park and pond complete with duck!

If you are traveling down I10, this place is really worth a stop. First of all it's free, can't complain about that. The woman there was super nice and informative. And the best part, you can hold baby alligators! They have some older ones too in their outdoor habitat. Sounds like quite a few school groups take trips out there, but we managed to hit a quiet time.

We were driving on the I-10 through Louisiana the 3rd week of November and my husband was bemoaning the fact that we were seeing a lot of birds (migratory season) but no alligators. Then we saw the sign for Gator Chateau in Jennings! This was actually the city welcome center, named Oil and Gas Park in honor of the very first oil well drilled in Louisiana. The Gator Chateau is a nursery for orphaned alligators found in the wild, which are raised by hand in a warm and dry glass tank. Trained educators and caretakers feed them a soy-based puree... the baby alligators are vegetarians-- until age 2. The baby alligators do not have any teeth and can be held and stroked. It was an extraordinary experience and a treat for us... After age 2, the juveniles are moved to an outdoors shallow pool where they grow into wilder and larger animals, and are then released at a natural refuge. I learned a great deal from the amazing volunteer educator that day. I held a 2-week old baby and a 2-year old gator, I am glad they are not part of the alligator farming industry which raises them for their leather.