Dr. Faith Burden

There's been a long history of people believing that donkey milk was both good to drink, but also to bathe in.

So Cleopatra bathed in asses milk.

So we've got a long history of donkey milk, but

many of the donkeys that produce donkey milk don't have the best life so donkey mothers tend to only produce a very small amount of milk and you know that milk is very very highly prized and very expensive but donkey milk production systems not all of them but some of them are not welfare minded and donkey cheese again is quite a sort of popular thing

But it takes so many litres of donkey milk to make a tiny amount of cheese.

So that's a lot of foals that are not getting to suckle from their mum to make that cheese.

You know, it has scientific basis.

And we know that the infant hospital in Paris in the 1800s used to have donkey jennies alongside to feed small babies that couldn't feed from their mum.

So there's a long history, there's good science, but welfare is not always at the heart of the industry.

There are some good small producers that we've worked with to try and improve their practices, but where there's a profit to be made, often animal welfare isn't the primary importance.

It does look something like Halloween, doesn't it?

So the fairy feet...

are there at birth they very quickly go but that's an adaptation to make sure that the jenny isn't hurt during birth so it's a soft covering of the donkey foals otherwise quite solid feet that could do a lot of damage but they do look quite ghoulish donkey feet apart from those first few hours after birth are amazing so they again are highly adapted to the environment that they come from so

very tough very rarely need shoes putting on unlike horses but they are adapted to dry conditions so when we see donkeys kept in temperate climates and where you know it's damp underfoot they get lots and lots of medical problems from being in that environment so that's one of the biggest issues that we face with donkeys around the

weather and underfoot issues that cause lameness and major hoof problems.

They most certainly are.

So we always describe donkey feet

feet like sponges.

So if you look under a microscope at a horse's hoof material versus a donkey's, the donkey's is much more open, will soak up much more water, which is great when you're in the desert because you need to soak up whatever droplets of water are available.

But if you're a donkey living in the southwest of England, where I am, we have lots of rain, it's