We had the good fortune of connecting with Jeana Friend and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jeana, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
There has always been some form of Jurassic Friends in our lives. We have always had reptiles as pets, and have worked closely with multiple retail reptile vendors over the years. We eventually came to the decision to turn our passion into a business, something where we can educate people about their new family members while ensuring they have the healthiest and happiest animals available to them.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
We started out when my husband and I were first together 2007 in Florida. We worked mainly with reptiles but a few mammals would come our way from time to time. I (Jeana) worked at Savanna Animal Hospital in Jensen Beach Florida. There, we honed our skills of care and expanded our knowledge thanks to the incredible staff who quickly became close as family. It was a shared mission to help the helpless and to educate people about the things they feared without understanding. In 2009 our son was born and my husband (Mick) started working on snake breeding. He started ted with corn and rat snakes and quickly moved into hybrid king/corn crosses. During this time he was a retail construction superintendent and towards the end of 2009 the construction market followed the housing market and money was tight. We sold the snake project of 180 snakes and it was a struggle for the next few years, we would have some animals here and there while our son Trey grew up but nothing close to the level of where we are now. During this time, Mick worked as a traveling construction superintendent and it made it difficult to dedicate time to breeding projects. When trey turned 9 in 2018, a good friend let us tag along to all his reptile shows and started paying Trey in leopard geckos.

Trey lit the fire to this crazy world we are in now. Shortly thereafter, He started breeding geckos and then moved into bearded dragons simultaneously. In 2018 we relocated from Florida to Georgia Mick also started working locally in construction. We had always talked about doing this as a business on our own as a pipe dream but in 2019 we realized we were already doing it partly and we decided let’s go all in!

We turned the basement into Jurassic Friends HQ. Argentine Tegus are our favorite type of lizard so we decided to start with that species, we now have over 15 breeding tegus along with many other species of reptiles. We now vend reptile shows every most weekends. Jurassic Friends has expanded quicker than we expected, I (jeana) was able to quit my day job and run the company full time with Trey working part time taking care of all the animals after school. My cousin Amber works with us as well and she’s amazing, she runs our chameleon breeding program. Our passion is still to help the helpless, and with some help from a great animal hospital here in Griffin called North Griffin Animal Hospital we are able to continue getting the best care possible for our animals.
Mick is still a Superintendent for a contracting company, so he builds most the tanks and enclosures we need for animals and that helps control costs.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
We love to take people to Noah’s ark sanctuary in Locust Grove, then eat at slices in downtown griffin followed by desert at cake n shake in Locust grove. We love to go to the water falls and southern belle farms

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Both our parents, Savanna animal hospital in Jensen beach Florida, North griffin animal hospital in griffin ga,

A friend who’s more like a brother, who needs not to be named but knows who he is… and what he’s started lol.
Our mentor and surrogate grandfather, Fred Spector

Website: Jurassicfriends.com

Instagram: Jurassic _friends_LLC

Facebook: @jurassicfriendsllc

Other: Tiktok @jurassicfriendsllc

Nominate Someone: ShoutoutAtlanta is built on recommendations and shoutouts from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.