One of our Jennies died and I had a two week old foal to raise without his mother. The first and most pressing question. What to feed him? I was fortunate that my foal had a mother until he was two weeks old, and therefore he had been started off with Colostrum and mother's milk. Because of this, he was a healthy foal, although thin as the milk had been in short supply.
However, young donkey foals are delicate and I knew the wrong kind of milk would likely be the end of him too. After consultation with Clare Davis (our local donkey welfare expert who I knew had successfully reared donkey foals) I started Cocoa on Di-vetelact, a good formula to feed him during the transition time from mother's milk to whatever I was going to feed him for the next few months.
I wanted to rear him in the best way possible, without it costing the earth and without giving up my life to it, but opinions varied quite widely as to the better way. Different formulas were suggested and goat's milk kept
coming up. Although I didn't own a goat, goat's milk seemed like a good option to me so Edwina, a Saanen
with a good milk yield, moved in.
We quickly settled in to a routine of morning and night milking, and Cocoa settled into a regular feeding pattern. The first few weeks were tough. Cocoa needed to be fed at night as well as during the day and at frequent intervals, every couple of hours while he was tiny, increasing to every four hours as he grew. As he grew more I did not have to get up during the night to feed him.
However, with Cocoa well established on his goat's milk, another problem was becoming apparent. His social skills (or lack of them).
Never underestimate what a Jenny is to her foal. She protects him, loves and looks
after him, and she teaches him how to be a donkey. Cocoa had lost all this when Clara died, so now I just had
to do the best I could for him. I wanted him to grow up knowing he was a donkey and also to have some
protection (a two week old foal on his own is very vulnerable) so I put one of my Jennies, Dulcy, with him. I
was confident she would take care of him, though of course not to the extent which his mother would have,
Dulcy auntied him until he was 4 months old, very boisterous and in need of some sterner company.
With constant discipline (both from people and other animals), Cocoa's manners have improved as he has grown
up.
He is now mature and my gentle and reliable harness donkey, we have a lot of fun together and I'm very proud of him.
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