How we got into Mini Donkeys!
So mini donkeys? Why? It is something people ask us about all of the time! So here is a little back story - Daniel had a mini donkey named Alfee for about 6 years. His mom, Cathy purchased him from a livestock auction here in Northern California. Daniel raised him from about six months old. Unfortunately Alfee was not part of a herd, so he was lonely and really loud. But he was so sweet! I still remember the first time I met Alfee, he came running over to meet Daniel at the fence and let us pet him. He lifted his lip on one side...Daniel said he was smiling at me, but who really knows. He was definitely a donkey with a lot of personality. Our closet neighbors had complained about the noise. Daniel and I had just moved in together and had been living in town and were not not always able to make it our here, so an opportunity to trade him came about and Cathy made the trade for a quiet mini horse. To say that Daniel was heartbroken really just does not do justice to his feelings, but it is the best I can use to explain how he felt. Sadly, just a month later we moved to the family property with this new mini horse Foxy.
We tried endlessly to make her friendly. Walked her, brushed her, loved on her (she was not into this), nothing seemed to work. Realizing Daniel's sadness, Cathy offered to buy us another mini donkey foal (babe). However, it was not an easy find and definitely not at an affordable price! We were super sad, but remained hopeful. A few months later Cathy came up with an idea to "make our own" mini donkey babe. We were a bit skeptical at the time because I mean I grew up a city kid and we really didn't know the first thing about breeding donkeys! Cathy, thankfully was confident and so we began our quest to find donkey parents.
We found some female rescues, which is a whole other story for another post, and a male. The girls were wild to say the least, but Jet our male was SUPER friendly. We really did not have any idea of what we were doing, but 13 months later our first donkey babe, made here on our farm was born! It was the best Christmas gift ever. Once she came along we were just so in love with how friendly, loving, and fun our little girl was. How could we not do more of this and bring joy to other families?
So that's the history of how Boyle Family Farm started bringing mini donkey babes into the world. There were lots of struggles on this journey that we will share in other posts, along with why every farm should have mini donkeys! Stay tuned!
