Anyone who knows me well will tell you that I must have dormouse genes somewhere in my makeup! I am not known for keeping late nights or early mornings. However, when the call came out for volunteers to feed Ashley, our orphaned foal I jumped at the chance. How could I resist the honour of helping this lovely little chap?

At 4 am this morning I arrived at our isolation unit to find Ashley wide awake and already at his stable door waiting for his next feed. He was extremely well behaved and patiently watched while I made up his special foal milk after his last feed at midnight.

Sadly for one little foal born at the Sanctuary on Tuesday 20th October 2009, his mother tragically died giving birth. We are now hand-rearing Ashley as a suitable foster mare could not be found.

Staff at the Sidmouth-based Donkey Sanctuary are working round-the-clock to hand rear and bottle feed a foal whose mother tragically died during birth last week.