Beauty is 28 years old and has been living at Paccombe Farm, one of our outlying farms, since April this year with a small group of elderly donkeys that require special care. She was relinquished into our care from a loving home in Yorkshire and is now cared for by Evie Butcher, one of the grooms at the farm.

Our veterinary team identified that Beauty’s eyesight was deteriorating and Evie felt that this was contributing to her nervousness when approached by any of the grooms and was delighted to find that some recent training in donkey behaviour she had done through our training centre was really useful in finding a way to communicate better with Beauty.

The farm staff all participate in our in-house training scheme which is called the Bronze Diploma. One of these modules covers an introduction to equine behaviour and how the staff can use this when training the donkeys.

Evie took part in the course under the tuition of Ben Hart, our resident donkey care training manager, and told me this morning that “It really helped to apply what we learned with Beauty. Ben suggested that we clap when we want Beauty to come in for her special feed and she quickly learnt to follow the sound”.

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