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Foal ends up with two mums after "one in a million" birth story
SWNS
Follow
08/05/2025
A foal is now being raised by two mums after a "one in a million" birthing phenomenon left a mother without a foal to care for.
Sol, now just one week old, is being cared for by Mary and Starr, both six years old, after one of the donkeys gave birth to a stillborn foal.
Both mothers gave birth at the same time and both attached to the healthy foal.
Farm owner Ben Best, 32, believes the chances of his two pregnant donkeys giving birth early and at the same time "must be one in a million."
Mary and Starr were expected to give birth in June, so neither donkey was set up in the birthing barn.
Since they foaled more than a month early, they weren't being monitored, so no one at the farm knows which donkey is the biological mother.
Now, the pair shares parental duties equally with Sol feeding from both donkeys.
Category
😹
Fun
Transcript
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00:00
It is the most bizarre thing to see in such a minute chance of this happening.
00:06
For those of you who don't know the remarkable story of Saul, our little donkey foal here,
00:12
he has two mums.
00:14
So both of these mums, Star and Mary, here they are ushering him around the paddock,
00:21
were pregnant and due to foal at the same time and that's exactly what they did.
00:24
They foaled at identical times.
00:27
Now unfortunately, one of the mums had a stillborn foal but the other one had a perfectly healthy foal
00:35
and because they foaled at the same time, they both claimed the same healthy foal
00:42
and we weren't here at the time to be able to see who gave birth so we have no way of knowing who the mum actually is
00:48
but they don't care.
00:50
You can see the way they're behaving.
00:52
They behave exactly the same way.
00:54
Little Saul nurses from both of them.
00:58
He feeds from both of them and the good thing is out of this tragic situation of losing a foal
01:03
and having a stillborn, not one of these mums is bothered because they both think equally
01:09
that that foal is theirs.
01:11
So we don't have any grieving mums at all and both of them are quite happy.
01:15
They're both happy looking after them 50-50.
01:18
So unless things change, unless one of the mums has a change of heart, we'll leave things as they are
01:24
and they can be an amazing little trio.
01:28
There's no reason to upset the apple cart, upset one of the donkeys and take one off.
01:34
So Saul's nearly a week old now and we've kept him inside since he's been born just to monitor mum's behaviour
01:41
because it's such a peculiar set of circumstances.
01:43
We wanted to make sure that the behaviours of both mums are absolutely fine
01:47
and we're confident that we're going to look after him out here in the paddock.
01:51
But now everything seems absolutely perfect.
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