Orphaned Baby Donkey Cried For Days Until He Found A New Mom | The Dodo

Ben's mother was relinquished to the Donkey Sanctuary. She was already pregnant when she came in. Ben was her first foal. She rejected him. We don't think he even got to suckle for her. He's literally got no idea who he is. Okay. Our staff were feeding him throughout the night. We had to have bottles every four hours, getting that food into him. But also handling him, training him. We were really lucky to have Jingles, a mare that we knew had had a foal. Jingles didn't have a bonded friend, which meant that she could go and be with Ben. So we brought her in. And you could see Ben was terrified. Every time she went towards him, he kind of went, oh no, and ran off. It took about four or five hours for her and Ben to start to look after each other. Once he started to run around a little bit, she just went over, gave him a little nuzzle and told him to calm down. You could see that all her mothering instincts had come back. She really took to guiding him and nurturing him. And has really made the difference in his life, actually. We had these other mares that had foals. Ben then had some companions to play with. She's kind of like fussing over him a little bit too much. You almost see Ben sometimes going like, get off, I'm fine, I can do this. Ben was trained literally from day three. So he has a brilliant foundation. He's learned to stand still for increasingly long periods of time. His behavior now is so good, you wouldn't know that he was an orphan foal. He has great friends and donkey companions that he'll probably stay connected to for the rest of his life, in fact. Everything turned out just so well for him. He's independent now. He's a big boy. It's exceptional. It's just a perfect story.