About us and Our Donkeys - Iron Brook Donkeys
Donkeys are my love and our passion. I am Linda Jay, and when I was born in 1971 my parents already had donkeys which they bred and trained.
As I was growing up I experienced the character and charm of donkeys every day. When I was at school, my peers would often suggest that I should buy a pony so that I could come to pony club, but when I looked, that didn't seem to be a place I fitted in to.
I loved the donkeys, I think I enjoyed being different, and I also noted that our pasture was much healthier than those of my horse owning friends. Donkeys are much easier on pasture than horses.
As soon as I was able to get my own land, donkeys were soon to follow, and my passion for them has only grown. My aim is to improve the knowledge about donkeys, and teach people their true value and also how to care for them. Increasingly my business has been around donkey and human interactions and education, pets as therapy and demonstrations. Dissolving the myths around donkeys and sharing the love.
My other love is dogs. Visitors to the farm will meet Sudo the koolie. She is a part of the donkey's lives from day one. Sudo nuzzles and snuggles the young foals and trots alongside us on the trails.
As I was growing up I experienced the character and charm of donkeys every day. When I was at school, my peers would often suggest that I should buy a pony so that I could come to pony club, but when I looked, that didn't seem to be a place I fitted in to.
I loved the donkeys, I think I enjoyed being different, and I also noted that our pasture was much healthier than those of my horse owning friends. Donkeys are much easier on pasture than horses.
As soon as I was able to get my own land, donkeys were soon to follow, and my passion for them has only grown. My aim is to improve the knowledge about donkeys, and teach people their true value and also how to care for them. Increasingly my business has been around donkey and human interactions and education, pets as therapy and demonstrations. Dissolving the myths around donkeys and sharing the love.
My other love is dogs. Visitors to the farm will meet Sudo the koolie. She is a part of the donkey's lives from day one. Sudo nuzzles and snuggles the young foals and trots alongside us on the trails.
Knowing of the rise and fall of donkey popularity over the years, we believe that training the donkeys is the best way to ensure that they have good, long and loving homes throughout their lives. Donkeys live a long time and people's situations change, and the foal we sell today may need a new home one day. That early training will help the donkey to always find a suitable home, and this is why we spend so much time teaching our donkeys how to do stuff. It is much easier for a trained donkey to find a home with a new family.
Training donkeys also helps people to appreciate them and understand them. It is also thoroughly enjoyable and rewarding.
We also believe that there is still much to learn about donkeys, and their health. We have set up The Donkey Shop to help in the sharing of knowledge as it develops and changes, and to make it easier to find things specific to donkey health, care and training. We have added to that some fun donkey stuff to bring smiles to those who love long ears.
The images below are of our donkey jack that I grew up with in the Adelaide Hills. He was called Newstead Jack. He was very gentle, and we were able to do so much with him. The costume photo was taken at a South Australian donkey day in about the late 1970's (or early 80's).
