Hazelwood College’s Eyes Opened to Cruelty to Animals
Hazelwood College 3D CSPE trip to the Donkey Sanctuary in Liscarroll
Do you know your mule from your jennet? Well, the place to find out is the Donkey Sanctuary in Liscarroll which our 3rd year class from Hazelwood College visited recently as part of our CSPE Action Project to raise awareness of Animal Welfare.
Upon our arrival, we were greeted by a volunteer who gave us a brief history of the sanctuary and some facts about it. More than 4,000 donkeys have been rescued since the sanctuary was set up and hundreds of donkeys are currently being cared for in Liscarroll, with 500 more on a waiting list for a place. 280 donkeys were rescued this year alone. On the same week that we visited there was a case of 24 donkeys left in a forest in Kildare. If the sanctuary hadn’t found them they would have died.
Some people buy pet donkeys thinking of them as glorified lawnmowers, not realising that they have an average life span of 50 years. Their situation is rather similar to that of puppies bought around Christmas time, people get them as cute babies and give them love and affection until they grow older and lose their cuteness, at which point the mistreatment begins. The mistreatment can vary from not cleaning out their stable as often as it should be done to not feeding them or, in worse cases, beating them. The number of mistreated or abandoned donkeys has steadily risen over the past few years due mainly to the recession. They are expensive to keep and are now viewed by many as an unaffordable luxury. There used to be grants for farmers that owned donkeys, which made it beneficial to own them and give them good living conditions but that grant was removed recently.
The level of care that the volunteers give the donkeys at the Donkey Sanctuary is amazing. They clean out all the stables twice a day and give them plenty of straw, hay and water. The volunteers seem to really care about the donkeys, which is heart-warming. It was a delight to be able to see these calm, relaxed donkeys grazing in the huge fields of lush green grass. It’s almost like a holiday resort for donkeys. And another thing they told us there is that a mule is the offspring of a female horse and a male donkey, while a jennet is the foal of a female donkey and a male horse.