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| Story Date | Headline |
| 03/01/2008 | Latest Donkey News - Latest Foal |
It has been a long time since this news page has been updated and for that apologies!!! Too much work, as donkeys need lots of love and care and they do come first. Those of you that have visited have seen for yourselves the happy well cared for herd that greets every visitor with delight. They are so happy to be with humans as this is very much part of their lives. Rosario has once again delivered a beautiful baby girl on 21st December 2007. Named Cereza she is now coming up to 12 weeks old. She is eating very well and gallops around and is a happy girlie. Wonderful bone structure and body harmony so will be a great looking adult donkey. At birth she stood 96cm to the wither, fantastic!. WE have had some sad events as well. Our lovely Lola lost her foal at 10 months with the umbilical cord wrapped around the back legs and cutting off the food supply so that was an abortion and a tricky one at that. Lola now is well recovered and will be mated this spring. Vulnerada too lost a foal at 4 months, recovered and was mated again and then having waited for another year just 11 days before she was due to birth in January of this year she aborted with twins!!!!! Again one had the umbilical cord wrapped around the back legs and the other foal did not even take a breath. This was a real shock to us all as we had seen on the ecografia just one foal . We would have never allowed Vulnerada to carry two foals. She was a very very sad donkey so it was a lengthy time to allow her to grieve before we could even move the babes away from her. The one consolation was that they were two males and in all honesty we were hoping for females now. So you see folks it is not all sweetness and light when you are breeding. We have our down time too! Happily all females are recovered and hopefully will all be mated this Spring. This year is a very exciting year for the herd as all the young females that have been born here are now old enough to come online for breeding. So if all goes well we should have 10 donkeys in foal for next year!!!! The only one still too young is Bella Belinda as she is not 4 years old until next year and we do not breed them until they are 4 years old. The young males have all grown well and are maturing at their own pace. Again you cannot rush any of this, nature will take her time and you sometimes just have to wait! Patience is a virtue here I can tell you. New ideas on the training front as we are using the Pat Parelli method which is so magical. Residential volunteers this year will have the chance to learn level 1 and they can get their work assessed by video in UK . We are also keen to see Pat Parelli volunteers here too! An opportunity to work with an endangered species does not come along very often so don’t miss out At the moment the sun is shining and the donkeys are relaxing in the field with its spring flowers and tasty green bits and pieces. More news in a short time. |
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