May 2011 – final relocation in full swing

It is happening: the relocation of our sanctuary is in full swing! This not only means carrying along stuff, but also transferring donkeys! Fortunately our big park, where all healthy adult donkeys live, could stay the way it was. As this park is created on land we own. So these donkeys do not need to be replaced. But the mother-and-foal-meadow and our special-care-meadow are both on the rental land that we are forced to leave. So the donkeys from these two meadows do have to be transferred.

Last week we transferred as much as 70 donkeys from the mother-and-foal-meadow. All of them mothers with foals that are meanwhile old enough to be placed in the big park, in between the hundreds of other donkeys. And very important: all male foals of them already castrated, for obviously we do not want any reproduction in the sanctuary! We created a corridor from the mother-meadow to the big park. In the pouring rain we lured the donkeys with bread and horse food to come with us. One donkey absolutely refused to relocate, so we had to force him to come along on a halter. As the mothers and foals had been living next to the big park, they already had the same smell as all donkeys in the big herd. So without problems they were accepted in the group and there is no fighting at all. That is... as long as we provide enough food for all of them!

The new stables and adjacent new special-care-meadow are not ready yet. But Ed and Genaro are working with might and main to finish this. The doors and fences of the stables are taken from the old stables, given a fresh layer of paint and reused in the new stables. As it would be a waste not to recycle them. All poles for the fence around the special-care-meadow are put in place. However on Bonaire was no wire-mesh available, so we are now waiting for wire-mesh coming from Curacao. Meanwhile we are busy building a shadow roof in de special-care-meadow, with a feeding and drinking place beneath it. A shadow roof is definately needed, as we fo not have any trees here to provide shelter against the sun. We hope to finish the stables and special-care-meadow by the first week of June, so we can then also transfer the donkeys that need special care to our new location. These donkeys are the little (orphaned) foals that are far too small to survive in the big park between the big herd. And some donkeys that need extra care for another reason and therefor need to be separated from the others. They are: Dean, Astrid, Justin, Cliff, Dinja, Florine, Ellen-Mey en Oscar. We thank the Dutch Society for Animal welfare, the Dutch Foundation Dierenlot en KI Developments, who made the building of the new stables and special-care-meadow possible.

The new drinking station for the donkeys is ready. Starting from the outlet near the road, we needed to install tens of meters of water pipes to reach the big park. Here Ed and Genaro made a beam on which the twenty new nipple drinkers have been installed. Donkeys are very curious by nature, so they immediately came over to investigate this new structure. Soon they found out that nice fresh water is to be found here. We thank all generous supporters that sponsored a drinker!

We also started to move stuff from our old little shop to the beautiful new souvenir shop. The new shop is much bigger than the old one, so we can display our souvenirs well. Besides we now have a kitchen in the back of the shop, so we will not only sell drinks but also small snacks to visitors. At the back of the shop three toilets have been made and also a storeroom for all our cleaning stuff. We thank Werkcon for sponsoring the shop, Merito for donating the stainless steel worktop, Plieger for the sanitary items and Van Doren Reclame for decorating the shop!

All in all: the relocation is in full swing. At the same time all normal daily jobs to run the sanctuary have to be done. So we are almost out of energy… but we are very proud that we survived this forced relocation and very happy that so many sponsors and kind-hearted people were willing to help us do so. And although we ourselves run out of energy, fortunately there will always be sufficient energy for our sanctuary thanks to the new wind turbine. We thank the Dutch Society for the Donkey Studbook that gave us this wind turbine!

Some while ago Marc Buma made gigapan pictures on our new location. Although meanwhile the construction work made a lot of progress and it was very rainy during the making of these special panorama pictures, we like to give you the opportunity to literally take a look around.  Go to gigapan pictures.

The official opening of our new location will be by the middle of June.