🍼 Donkey foal

A donkey foal is the young of a female donkey. A healthy donkey foal stands up about two hours after birth and soon starts to suckle.

Its first food is colostrum, the first milk with protective substances. Timing is very important. By three hours of age, the gut already absorbs these protective substances less than a quarter as well. So the foal must feed in the first 2–4 hours. In total, in the first 12 hours it needs 1–2 litres of colostrum, depending on its size.

A donkey foal suckles about seven times a day. It needs about 100 ml of milk per kilogram of body weight per day. If people are rearing the foal, it is fed often: every 1–2 hours in the first week, then every 2–3 hours. Donkey specialists advise weaning the foal from its mother gradually, at about one year old.

A donkey foal seems to arrive better prepared than a horse foal: it is less agammaglobulinemic at birth, with some antibodies already in its blood. Even so, early suckling matters, because in Amiata jennies the IgG in colostrum fell steadily over the first 24 hours after foaling. The Donkey Sanctuary advises a first feed within 2–3 hours and colostrum within 12 hours, and if there is any doubt, an IgG check at 16–20 hours.