Donation of Ennia for the donkeys on Bonaire – 4th of December 2009

Unfortunately it still often happens, that a wild donkey on Bonaire is hit by a car. Sadly the donkey almost always dies or at least is badly injured. Fortunately the driver normally does not have any physical damage. It can happen to anybody to bump up against a donkey, no matter how careful you drive. However we do hope that the driver feels responsible for the

poor animal and calls upon us to help the wounded donkey. Of course a crash with a donkey always gives damage to the car itself. If the owner has an all-risk insurance, the costs will be paid by the insurance company. When Donkey Sanctuary Bonaire started, more than 16 years ago, there were more than 150 registered donkey crashes every year. That number substantially decreased thanks to our activities, to only 5 crashes last year. Of course we did our work principally for the welfare of the donkeys, but obviously also the insurance companies benefited from our efforts. Ennia is the largest local insurance company in the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba. Amongst others they sell life-, health care- and accident insurances. Also car insurances are an important part of their

activities. Ennia values our good work and was willing to do something in return. Therefore today they handed us a cheque of 10.000 Antillian Guilders, as a contribution to our forced relocation. Fantastic, for we need all extra donations very much!

Newsletter and Christmas card sent by post – 9th of December 2009

Our yearly newsletter and Christmas card are recently sent by post. Herewith we want to inform you (as adopter, donator, sponsor or otherwise involved) about our activities in the last year and the perspectives for the coming year. But of course, herewith we want to thank you personally for your support and give you our best wishes. If you will accidentally not receive our newsletter and Christmas card, please let us know. Maybe we do not have your right address (anymore). In response to our newsletter we received an extra donation for the badly needed new fences and is one of our donkeys re-adopted. Great, thank you very much!

Rexy and Jasmijn – 10th of December 2009

In July we told you about Rexy, a new born foal that came to us severely wounded. And in September we informed you, that we gave shelter to another orphaned foal. We called her Jasmijn. We are very happy to let you know, Rexy and Jasmijn are doing well and that they

became close friends. They are always together in our ‘orphan meadow’ and really love each other. They also like to play tricks together! The wounds on Rexy’s legs healed very well. Only problem is that he now suffers from chronic diarrhoea, as a result from the antibiotics he already needed at his young age. Of course we do all we can to cure him from this and we keep him well cleaned meanwhile, to prevent him from flies laying eggs in his dirty fur. Jasmijn is

doing perfectly fine and voraciously gulps down her bottles of foal milk several times a day. It is very rewarding that we were able to save these two little ones. We hope they will have a good future in our sanctuary!

Emergency situation hay for our donkeys – 14th of December 2009

For the 430 donkeys that live in our sanctuary at this moment, we need huge amounts of hay. Hay is vital for their digestion and essential as daily food. Until today we bought hay from Venezuela. Although this hay is an inferior quality (lots of dust and dirt in it, little nutritious), this was the only affordable option for us. However as a result of export restric-

tions in Venezuela, the prize of this hay has recently increased enormously. And from now on, it will nearly not be possible at all to buy hay from there anymore. So henceforth we must get our hay from Holland. Af far as only the buying prize and quality are concerned, this is a good choice. As a good quality bale of hay from Holland weighs about 22 kilograms and will cost us about 3 to 4 Euro. While for a bad quality little bale of hay from Venezuela,

that only weighs 10 kilograms, we had to pay 6 Euro the last time! So the buying prize of hay from Holland is far more attractive. Especially since it is a much better quality and so we can feed less kilograms of it to our donkeys. However the problem is, that we can not afford the transportation costs for hay from Holland. Shipping one container of hay from Rotterdam to Bonaire will cost us about 4.400,- Euro! So we have an emergency situation. We only have for one week of hay left in our sanctuary, there is no possibility to buy hay here on Bonaire anymore and we do not have money to pay for transportation of hay from Holland. Of course we are trying hard to think of ways to get help for this problem, as without hay we can simply not keep our donkeys alive!