Matabeleland Animal Rescue & Equine Sanctuary (MARES) May 2023 Report

One of the partner groups which Animal Aid Abroad supports with the help of our generous donors is the Matabeleland Animal Rescue & Equine Sanctuary (MARES). Following is their report of activities during the month of May 2023.

The beginning of May saw the passing of our 7 year old mule, Nutmeg.  The autopsy revealed a 22kg tumour.  During his short time of illness, 7 days, although showing signs of colic, he never pawed the ground, rolled or showed any sign of such an illness.  This is the epitome of how stoic donkeys are.  If this tumour had been in a horse, that horse would have been rearing, kicking, sweating and even biting anyone close to it.  Just 5 minutes after the passing of Nutmeg, our rescued donkey gave birth to a beautiful little filly who we named Cinnamon, in memory of Nutmeg.

During the month of May we travelled a fair distance twice, to collect injured donkeys.  The first was outside Bulawayo in a large township.  It was a male donkey who was walking on three legs, his front right leg unable to bend and judging by the length of the hoof, had been injured for at least 2-3 months.  A week after his arrival a huge abscess burst through the coronet and he was put onto antibiotics and pain meds.  Daily physiotherapy on his knee has improved his mobility and after 2 weeks was able to walk bearing weight on his front right leg. 

For the second donkey we travelled 190kms to Insuza, taking us over 4 hours to reach the donkey.  As it was lying next to the main road.  We at first presumed it had been hit by a vehicle but on closer examination, the injury to the back right hoof and leg was sustained from the scotch cart overriding the donkey.  The result that the owner of the donkey left him there to die!  We used this donkey in the veterinarian teaching clinic to identify body condition scores.  This donkey was a score of 1, the thinnest and most dangerous!  Administering pain meds, antibiotics and applying a special splint to align his hoof correctly, this little donkey has made huge progress and is now able to get up on his own and walk around.  He has a long way to go, but we are confident of a full recovery.

Our little donkey that was attacked by the leopard, Ashira, sadly lost her unborn foal.  It is not surprising considering her ordeal.  It was also discovered that due to the extent of the injury to her vulva she will not be able to reproduce again.  This then poses a problem to the donkey owner as she will be of no use to him as she cannot work and now cannot reproduce.  The donkey owner has therefore surrendered Ashira to us to live at MARES and we have given him a young and fit donkey to replace her.  We shall be taking the new donkey back to Fort Rixon where we shall also be doing an outreach clinic for the donkey owners in this area.

MARES was invited to run one of 10 education clinics being held at MARES Donkey Sanctuary to teach all the local Government Veterinary Departments in every Province of Zimbabwe on donkey welfare.  Some of the Topics covered were:

The knowledge of halter and harness, hitching of donkeys to carts, cart balancing, sites and harness wounds, aging, body condition score (1-5), assessing height, weight, hooves, lameness and nutrition.

Annexed to these clinics will be the reinstating of donkeys on the Government vet animal stock sheets.  By doing this, the donkeys will once again be dipped, vaccinated and attended to by the local vets, something that was discontinued at Independence in 1980!  This seems small in print but is a huge advantage for the wellbeing of the rural donkeys.  Once reinstated we will be looking to branding the donkeys with liquid nitrogen, a far more humane way to brand rather than fire branding and the use of micro chips instead of the traditional ear cutting, which is also extremely painful and inhumane.

For World Donkey Day on 8th May, MARES Donkey Sanctuary held a Sponsor a Bale locally.  Sadly, it was not as successful as we hoped, receiving funding for just 100 bales but we did receive a 40th birthday funding from a South African sponsor which paid for 600 bales!  We received 5000 bales in the month of May with hopefully another 5000 in the next 2 months.