North Texas Daily

Dana Pisciottano / Intern Photographer

Willis Library Mall hosted two guests from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. today to help students celebrate their first “Hump Day” of the semester. A crowd of students lined up to have photos taken with two camels — Farrah, 14, and Samantha, 20 — provided by UPC Syndicate Services.

Farrah and Samantha are two of 25 camels at Hiview Farms in Waxahachie, Texas, a company Lorne McMillan started 25 years ago.

“We started out by monkeying around with mini horses, then in ’89 my wife and I went to an exotic sale in Missouri and saw a potbelly pig,” McMillan said.

Around this time, the popularity of potbelly pigs as household pets was quickly growing.

“I bought my first pig with six piglets for $3,000 and sold all of the little ones for about $4,500 a piece,” McMillan said.

McMillan’s gold mine in potbelly pigs soon ran dry. He said in 1991 a pig wasn’t even worth $50.

Shifting his main focus, McMillan began to purchase other exotic animals such as zebras, ringtail lemurs, exotic birds and camels, as well as other animals like donkeys and goats. Samantha is the first camel McMillan purchased 15 years ago, and she is still used for breeding purposes.

“Camels are worth $5,000 when they’re born, and a female in good health such as Samantha is worth at least $10,000,” he said.

Prior to Hump Day, the majority of the work his camels had was for Christmas Nativity scenes. Because of the recent pandemic of Hump Day, Hiview Farm’s camels have found more work to help hump-day-challenged humans celebrate Wednesdays the right way.

“I’d never even heard of Hump Day before all of these commercials came out,” McMillan said.

Feature photo: Biology sophomore Shakee Sanders has a laugh with camels Farrah and Samantha this afternoon at the library mall. The UPC Syndicate Services brought the two camels to campus today in honor of it being the first “hump day” of the semester. Photo by Dana Pisciottano / Intern Photographer