There were camels in pasture, a gigantic wingless emu, shrieking peacocks on the dirt paths, a pen stocked with miniature horses and donkeys.

There were owls, falcons and an Andean condor with a 10-foot wingspan, as well as every conceivable breed of farm animal housed in the barns, cages and outdoor enclosures that dotted the campus of what might be his new school.

For his mother, Leslie DeLeon, that first visit to Green Chimneys, a school for special-needs children on a former dairy farm in Putnam County, New York, seemed the answer to her prayers.

“He was like, ‘Oh, I can watch the chickens lay their eggs and sit on them,'” she recalled. “I was crying, because I knew that I had finally found the right place for my son.”

Before coming to Green Chimneys, Xander, who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and dyslexia, felt overwhelmed at school. He would throw tantrums and often simply walk out of class at the Manhattan charter school he attended. By 10 a.m. most mornings, the school would call DeLeon, a public-school teacher in Washington Heights, to ask her to pick up her son.

Now at Green Chimneys, Xander is getting A’s and B’s. “The school staff tell him that he won’t be able to work on the farm if he doesn’t continue to do well in school,” DeLeon said. The prospect of being separated from his beloved goats has motivated Xander in ways his traditional school never could.

The Green Chimneys School for Little Folk was opened in 1948 by an animal-loving educator and philanthropist named Samuel B. Ross Jr. He pioneered the idea that emotionally challenged children could gain confidence and become socially adept by caring for animals.

What started as a boarding school with 11 students is now a fully accredited day and residential facility with two campuses (the larger in Brewster, New York, and the smaller in Carmel, New York), with 243 students, and at least as many animals.

While the idea that animals could help kids learn and heal emotionally was revolutionary in Ross’ day, the benefits today are practically common knowledge. “There has been a lot of research on pets at home and how healthy it is in the past 10 years,” said Steven Klee, director of clinical and medical services at Green Chimneys.

Yet psychologists have been slow to translate these insights into effective strategies for helping people in a therapeutic setting. At first, Klee himself was skeptical that animals could be a part of therapy.

“When you have traditional training as a psychologist, you never think about doing anything outside of the office,” Klee said. “Therapy means talking — you wouldn’t even consider using an animal.”

At Green Chimneys, however, he learned that sometimes it’s easier for kids with behavioral issues to develop relationships with animals than with people.

“Humans are much harder to understand,” Klee said. “Animals in a sense are purer, more consistent, more accepting. You are kind to the animals, they show their appreciation.”

For a fearful child, Klee has found that interacting with an animal can be a first step to relating successfully with others.

Perhaps surprisingly, this kind of interaction works even with the least outdoorsy city kids. Most come from New York suburbs, and around 10 percent are from the city itself.

“I used to stay in my room not doing anything — I’d miss school and stuff,” said Austin Stark, a Green Chimneys senior from midtown Manhattan. “I wasn’t exactly a nature fan in the beginning.” He initially resisted the school, and was able to fall asleep only with music blaring in his headphones.

“It seemed like nothing was happening here,” he recalled. “I wanted to get back to the city.” That changed when Austin developed a bond with the somewhat bowlegged horse Nelson.

“I felt for his pain; I gave Nelson moral support,” he said. “If I was feeling bad, I would come to the horse barn to clear my head.” Before long he had signed up to mentor younger children in the dorm.

Sean Duffy, a history teacher at the school, witnessed the transformation firsthand. “I’ve seen Austin grow from a quiet, withdrawn kid in ninth grade,” Duffy said, “to someone who is successful academically and socially. He has even become something of a leader in the class.”

Animal-assisted therapy is no longer unique to Green Chimneys. Several schools in New York state, like the Orchard School, run by the nonprofit Andrus in Yonkers, and The Charlton School for girls in Burnt Hills, near Schenectady, offer some kind of therapeutic program incorporating animals. But according to Kevin Morris, director for the Research Institute for Human-Animal Connection at the University of Denver, Green Chimneys remains in the vanguard.

“There are schools with a horse program or a dog program; there are other places with farm animals,” he said. “But this is the only place that I know of that incorporates all of those programs at one site.”

Morris and his team have been conducting research at Green Chimneys as part of an ongoing study into animal therapy. The researchers have installed cameras in the classrooms that record classes on a daily basis. They analyze the children’s behavior before and after they have been on the farm.

While the results of their study won’t be published until their research is completed, it is already clear, Morris said, “that there is a calming and focusing effect inherent in these farm programs.”

It remains to be seen, however, whether the changes that they are observing are temporary, he said, or if they can lead to a permanent shift in a child’s well-being.

Public schools seem to be at their capacity in their ability to help children with special needs. One reason for this, according to Rachel Fish, an assistant professor of special education at New York University, is the nationwide shortage of teachers who are trained to work with them. Demand for programs like Green Chimneys has never been greater, she said, especially in New York City, when limits on reimbursing privately run schools for such services was lifted by the de Blasio administration in 2014.

With a staff-to-student ratio of 4-1 on the main campus and a level of individualized care that few schools can offer, Green Chimneys has become a beacon for children who are unable to function in a traditional school environment.

Every year there are about 1,000 referrals to Green Chimneys; last year, only 95 new students were admitted. It is also expensive. Tuition is $50,000 a year for day students, and considerably more for those who board. The school is partly funded by the New York State Education Department, which has licensed it to serve students from kindergarten through high school.

Green Chimneys is always free for the students themselves, said the school’s executive director, Dr. Edward Placke. Their tuition is paid by their local school districts, which are sometimes reluctant to send students there. Parents who are eager to get their children into the program occasionally hire professional “parent advocates” to argue their case before the districts, or even lawyers to file suit.

Once they are admitted, most students are eligible for the “Learn and Earn” program, where they are assigned chores on the farm, working with the animals or tending garden plots in exchange for a small stipend.

Xander’s job is to feed the goats and clean their pens. On a recent Thursday, the soft-spoken boy visited his charges together with his social worker, Elaine McGlinchey.

“This is Snowflake, my favorite” he said pointing to a cream-colored Saanen goat that had come to the gate to greet him. “Sometimes when I feed Snowflake, the sheep come by and try to eat her food,” he said. But he pointed out that Snowflake has two friends called Tom and Jerry who use their horns to drive off hungry intruders.

“The goats help one another,” Xander said. “They also really help me when I’m angry, because they are so peaceful and calm. If I feel sad, Snowflake comes and sits next to me.”

Like many children at Green Chimneys, Jack Elliot, a 12-year-old from Rye, New York, has received a diagnosis on the autism spectrum. When Jack, a loquacious boy with long brown hair, first went there, he often failed to pick up on people’s body language, standing too close to people or touching them in ways that made them uncomfortable.

Then Jack met Dixie, a shaggy-maned Shetland pony. He had been at the school for weeks, and it was the first time that the staff saw the boy smile, said Valerie Parody, Jack’s riding instructor.

Horses have to be approached slowly and calmly, Parody said, and you need to become sensitive to subtle cues like swooshes of the tail and the position of their ears to know whether or not you can safely get near them.

“Let’s say you are really going crazy, they might bite or kick you,” Jack explained as he led a brown miniature horse across a field.

Being with horses has required Jack to work on his own emotional self-regulation, Parody said. By learning the body language of horses, she says, he has also gradually learned to pick up on similar body cues in people.

“He’s become more aware of people’s personal boundaries and the need to respect them. I’ve seen him grow in confidence, the feeling ‘I can do this,'” Parody said. Jack now works with bigger horses as well, grooming and riding them and mucking out their stalls.

He has also become something of an expert. He spoke with relish about different types of dominance in horses, the reason they sleep standing up (to quickly escape predators) and what their favorite foods are. “Maya is pregnant now,” he said, pointing to a gray mare lounging in the pen. “When I touch her belly, I can feel the baby kicking.”

Not every child flourishes at the school. Those with severe learning disabilities and behavioral problems may struggle, and the average stay (2 1/2 years) is not always long enough to affect permanent changes in children. Transitions from Green Chimneys back to families and local schools can also be difficult.

Moreover, not everyone agrees that special-needs children should be sent to privately run schools at public expense. Some argue that the money would be better spent strengthening the special-needs programs in public schools rather than offering the best education that money can buy to a fortunate few.

Still, for the children who are lucky enough to be admitted to Green Chimneys, the prognosis is good.

Luis Tejada grew up in Washington Heights in the 1990s. By his own admission, he hung out with the wrong circle and became so unruly that his single mother could no longer handle him.

Luis was angry and often violent, and mistrustful of adults. But he was also a secret lover of animals. He collected stray dogs and persuaded a local building superintendent to let him house them in the basement where he would go to feed them.

When his mother shipped him off to Green Chimneys, as he put it, he was resentful. But Luis immediately fell in love with the horses, relishing the challenge and danger of working with big animals.

He developed a special connection with one ex-racehorse called Bonz. “They rescued him just like they rescued me,” recalled Tejada, now 31 and an information technician at a nursing home in Pennsylvania.

Miyako Kinoshita, an administrator at the school who was his riding instructor at the time, recalled a turning point in his development. “Luis really wanted to take Bonz to the local horse show,” she said.

At first the staff was skeptical. “It’s really hard for our kids to compete in such a situation with children whose families have money to give them private lessons and own their own horses,” Kinoshita said. “It is a very difficult thing to compete against other kids who don’t have the same problems he did.”

They needn’t have worried. Luis took second place in the riding competition; Bonz took first place for horses. Tejada still displays the ribbons he won that year in his bedroom.