Health

Believe it or not spring is around the corner! After a particularly cold and wet winter we are all looking forward to the grass starting to grow and daylight hours getting longer. Spring is a wonderful time of year and our donkeys and mules enjoy it as much as we do.

Equine feed specialists, TopSpec, have developed a new donkey forage product in conjunction with international welfare charity The Donkey Sanctuary and launch the unique product across Britain this week.

TopSpec have also shown their support for the charity by agreeing to donate £1 from every bag of the product sold.

Most of the country has experienced wetter than normal conditions this year, resulting in a very poor growing season for many farmers. It’s still difficult to tell how this will have affected this year’s straw and hay production, but it is highly likely that we will continue to experience increases in forage prices and difficulty in sourcing good quality barley straw and meadow hay.

Bathing and shampooing the donkeys once they have been clipped has proved an effective method to minimise their lice burden and means that we have not had to use chemicals on them with the aim of gradually lessening the resistance to the drugs that the lice have shown.

Donkeys come to our Derbyshire Centre for many reasons, some with health problems or ailments that need ongoing treatment. When 10 year old Olga arrived earlier this year with her group of Poitou donkey friends she was still recovering from fracturing her neck several months earlier.

This time last year we asked for your help for our elderly donkeys who were being 'bothered' by constant flies buzzing around them as well as some of the very old and frail donkeys suffering from the flies biting their legs.