Every morning when we arrive at the farm, our very first job is to check that all the donkeys are ok.
Old Yard is the first stop. We have a little peek into all the stables to make sure everyone is up and out of bed before we go around and hand out the medications to our elderly resident donkeys. Once that has been done the next job is to feed... and don’t we know it... They might be old, but they have still got a lot of huff to bray with!
The donkeys that receive extra feeds in Old Yard need to have their breakfast soaked as they don’t have many teeth to chew with. So each morning we fill up buckets of warm water to soak the feed with.
Well, this was all going swimmingly well until a little chap called Muffin felt he was missing out!
Muffin is 29 years of age and has been 'part of the furniture' here at Paccombe Farm for many years. He was already a cheeky donkey but when he spotted the others were getting buckets of warm water taken to them, he decided that he wanted some too.
One morning he toddled up to the door of the feed room where we were filling up buckets from and started tapping on it with his hoof! We wondered what all the commotion was about and went to see what was going on; leaving the bucket of warm water on the ground. Next thing we knew, Muffin had drunk the whole lot!
Well once the rumour had gone around that there were 'cups of tea' on offer, we soon had a queue waiting every morning. Just to give a touch of flavour, we added some peppermint cordial!
Here’s a short video clip of just how popular our daily tea service has become among the donkeys with Muffin first in the queue ... enjoy!
We’re looking to extend this very special tea service to all our elderly donkeys to help keep them warm this winter. There’s nothing like a hot drink on a cold day to keep us all warm!
At the moment all we have is an old urn that only has enough water to fill one bucket. The rest we have to do with a kettle so is taking us a very long time.
We need to raise £1,245 for an improved hot water system for the Oldies Yard. If you would like help us reach that target, we know our donkeys would all love to wake up on Christmas morning and share a cup of peppermint tea together with you all. Can we count on you?
