A New Start

Cute, little Charlie

As much as we'd like it to be otherwise, farm life is pretty unpredictable. This year has proved to be one of those unpredictable ones. We approached the foaling season with optimism but things took a turn for the worse. We started on a good note with the successful birth of Charlie but a few weeks later experienced the traumatic loss of our favorite and smallest donkey, Coco, along with her foal.

Our favorite Coco girl

About a month later, Ginger was born and we were ecstatic that she was alive but then we ran into trouble with her being a preemie and not receiving the nourishment she needed.

Sweet Ginger

It was perplexing trying to figure out why we were having so many problems. Of the ten foals born on our farm, four have died and a jenny as well, and with those foals that survived, several were a challenging delivery.

After a lot of phone calls, emails and research, we linked the problems to our herdsire, Inigo. He was much too big to use on our smaller jennies. We bought him sight unseen being told he was 28" but when he arrived, he turned out to be 32" on a good day, usually 33". Our jennies average around 30" which is a big difference.

Mr. Inigo

In August, we decided to have Inigo gelded. It was tough because it was basically like we were starting over. Inigo has so been so good for us and he is good natured. Of the foals that survived, each one had excellent conformation and stellar personalities. We were hoping to keep Inigo on the farm but feel like it is time for him to find a forever home.

Now we needed to find another jack for our herd. Again we made some phone calls and sent some emails and found a new, spotted jack prospect in Wyoming. We'd have to wait another year and a half before we could breed with him, but he was tiny (24" weanling) and adorable and looked like he would greatly benefit our breeding program.

Our future herdsire, Popcorn Jr.

We also got in contact with a person in Utah who was selling his herd of four jennies along with his truly 28" proven jack. We are hoping to welcome them to the farm in March and look forward to this new start.

As much as we strive to make it so, farm life isn't always as simple as we'd like. I guess it is in these complexities where we can truly appreciate the beauty of simple.