A nonprofit scoured public records to shed light on longstanding complaints of overcrowding, inadequate veterinary care and the lack of basic husbandry at a troubled Julian animal sanctuary.
What the records revealed was disturbing. San Diego County Department of Animal Services officers had visited Villa Chardonnay Horses with Wings multiple times without taking action, while the population of the sanctuary had more than doubled.
The work of the nonprofit, the Humane Farming Association, was not in vain. Last month, officers from the county, San Diego Humane Society and other organizations descended on the Villa Chardonnay property to rescue hundreds of emaciated and sick animals.
The Humane Society and other officials credited the national nonprofit devoted to farm animal protection with launching the largest animal rescue effort in the region’s history.
“The reports of potential abuse or neglect go back almost all the way to the beginning,” said Grace Wainscoat, the Humane Farming Association attorney who spearheaded the investigation. “We highly suspect that these problems have been ongoing for a very long time.”
When animal protection law enforcement officers served a search warrant on May 1, they discovered that hundreds of animals were sick, emaciated, malnourished or injured. In response, a judge transferred ownership of all 700 animals, including horses, donkeys, cats, dogs, ponies, goats, pigs, chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, roosters and turtles to the Humane Society.
“We have laws on the books that could have and should have prevented this. For the better part of a year, the San Diego (County) Department of Animal Services has been sitting on their hands,” said Humane Farming Association founder Bradley Miller in a phone call. “There were red flags all over the place.”
A review of years of records shows that the farming association had ample reason for alarm.
Complaints from the beginning
The county received the first complaint about Villa Chardonnay owner Monika Kerber within a month of her moving into the 40-acre property in 2020.
Within days, more complaints were lodged, some that followed Kerber from the sanctuary’s previous location in Hemet.
The complaints covered a range of issues: Not euthanizing animals soon enough, overcrowded cats in the garage cattery, and the conditions in a hospice barn for severely sick and dying horses.
One complaint, according to emails obtained by Times of San Diego, raised concerns over the lack of shelter to protect the thin-coated, older horses. While the horses had blankets, they did not have three-sided shelters to protect them from winter snows.
During another animal services visit, a horse was undergoing treatment for open sores caused by a blanket left on too long.
And it wasn’t just residents concerned about the animals’ conditions.
The San Diego County Sheriff’s Office contacted animal services about the horses after visiting the site to conduct a transfer of eight donkeys, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. An Orange County-based volunteer complained to the Department of Animal Services after dropping off rescued cats and being concerned about the conditions she witnessed inside the cattery.
Villa Chardonnay owner Kerber did not respond to a request for comment on those complaints.
Department of Animal Services officers visited the site a couple of times per year after receiving abuse reports between 2020 and 2024, documents show.
Sometimes, officers educated Kerber on proper care or conferred with veterinarians about treatment plans. Frequently, officers conducting unannounced checks were turned away, and then a scheduled inspection would be conducted days later.
At times, Kerber seemed welcoming to inspectors, while at others, she said they were not allowed inside without a warrant, according to notes from Department of Animal Services officials.
However, the department did not take every opportunity to visit the site.
In April 2024, an officer and trainee visited the site but were stopped by the gate. From outside the property, they observed two horses lying down, one that kept lifting its head before dropping back down.
The officers called a lieutenant, who said it was “not abnormal” for a horse to lie down. He called Kerber, who invited him to visit the property to see the animal care for himself. He decided not to.
“I declined due to the nature of the complaint and that based on my training and experience, people will not invite animal control officers on the property if they are in violation,” the lieutenant wrote in his notes.
Animal Services officers never made it back to the property to check on the animals.
Meanwhile, according to investigatory notes, Kerber described the abuse reports as stemming from “haters” making “stupid” complaints as part of a harassment campaign against her.
In 2025, Kerber even sent a cease-and-desist order to the county, saying their visits constituted harassment.
The back-and-forth between Kerber and Animal Services officers shows the difficulties for the county to launch investigations, says county spokesperson Chuck Westerheide.
“It is challenging to build any type of case against animal owners, as officers frequently can’t obtain the property access needed to thoroughly investigate claims.”
Sustained efforts
Over the course of several months, animal advocates kept hounding the county to address their concerns about widespread neglect — and tried to find support elsewhere after what they perceived as the Department of Animal Services’ inaction.
“They were screaming and yelling about what was going on,” said Miller, the Humane Farming Association CEO. “They were going to local agencies and not getting any help. So they came to us, even though our focus is industrial agriculture.”
Advocates went to the Humane Society, but were redirected back to the county since the property is outside the Humane Society’s jurisdiction.
“Ultimately, it can be really hard to get on property, especially rural property,” said chief Jace Huggins, who oversees the Humane Society’s law enforcement. “I think if (the Humane Society) had gone out there, we probably would have been met with the same resistance and had the same legal restrictions.”
After Kerber sent her cease-and-desist order to the county in March 2025, animal services received two more complaints. The first complaint was dismissed over not including new photo and video evidence, so the department did not request access to the property.
Months later, a horse owner who boarded their horse at Villa Chardonnay secretly snuck in to take photos of her horse, which she said had lost muscle mass and lacked adequate shelter. By then, the Humane Farming Association was already conducting its independent investigation and found a possible way onto the property through bankruptcy proceedings.
“This was sort of a unique case where local San Diego County residents weren’t getting anywhere,” Miller said.
After receiving the initial complaints, the Humane Farming Association tried repeatedly to get permission for an objective veterinarian to enter the site and inspect the animals. For a year, there was no legal way to do so.
In September 2025, Kerber and Villa Chardonnay filed for bankruptcy.
The filing, Miller and Wainscoat said, gave them a new avenue to pursue in hopes of gaining access to the property.
“(Humane Farming Association) was concerned that no action had really been taken to investigate whether the animals were okay, whether they were able to be cared for throughout the course of the bankruptcy,” the attorney, Wainscoat said. “And also, potentially, those earlier allegations of abuse and neglect were not fully investigated or dealt with.”
As a result, she said, the Humane Farming Association “took matters into its own hands.”
An opportune bankruptcy
The organization attended bankruptcy hearings after the Villa Chardonnay filing. The Humane Farming Association successfully advocated for an independent trustee to be appointed to manage the sanctuary. Then, they convinced the trustee to initiate a veterinarian inspection of the animals.
“This enforcement action was made possible because of the bankruptcy filing,” Westerheide said. “Humane Farming Association was able to get unlimited access to the property and all of the animals located at Villa Chardonnay.”
Wainscoat took part in the inspection, unsure of what she would see after it had been so many years since any photos or videos of the animals left the property, except through official social media channels.
“A lot of it was really difficult to see,” Wainscoat recalled. “We saw a lot of sick and injured animals, some of which were kept in a so-called or self-identified ‘hospice barn’ with really an apparent lack of clean shelter. And it did not appear that they were receiving what hospice is meant to communicate.”
As part of the bankruptcy, the Humane Society visited to create a plan to transfer the cats to its shelters. Humane Law Enforcement chief Huggins took part in the short visit, although it was announced in advance. He only had access to view the 450 cats in a 1,500-square-foot building for a short period of time, noting that it appeared to be cleaned ahead of the visit.
Transfer to Humane Society
Huggins returned two weeks later for a more thorough and property-wide inspection. He found cats with severe injuries that he had not seen before in a dirty space. Plus, he had the chance to see the rest of the animals, including horses unable to walk due to a lack of hoof care.
“When I returned, there was a little bit less notice, and there were a lot more concerning things that I noted,” Huggins said in a phone interview. “I wasn’t thrilled the first time around, but the second time around, I really wasn’t thrilled.”
On April 24, the county transferred the case to the Humane Society, due to the “extreme scope and scale of the rescue,” Westerheide said.
Four days later, Huggins received the Humane Farming Association’s veterinary inspection report. Combined with his eyewitness report, it was enough to seek a search warrant.
Once a judge approved, the Humane Society, the Humane Farming Association, the Department of Animal Services and other animal welfare groups descended on the property. Then began the laborious process of bringing hundreds of medically neglected animals back to a baseline condition.
Hundreds of those animals have been transported from the property, including 74 livestock taken to the Humane Farming Association’s 7,000-acre Suwanna Ranch sanctuary in Elk Creek, where San Diego Humane Society CEO Gary Weitzman said the animals would have the sanctuary they need and deserve.
“Suwanna Ranch is what a sanctuary should be —thoughtful, spacious and equipped to meet the unique needs of every individual animal.”
