Jack, an older miniature donkey at Rewild Refuge Farm Sanctuary in Kingston, Washington, marked one year at the sanctuary on October 5, and his first meeting with another donkey is circulating again. On Saturday, October 17, a popular animal-video channel folded his clip into a new compilation, nine months after it first posted his story in January.
The sanctuary, a nonprofit that takes in farm animals rescued from neglect, abandonment, abuse and the threat of slaughter, described the day Jack came home as the end of “a decade of isolation and solitude.” In its anniversary post on Instagram, it said he now has a fellow mini donkey for a friend, Rooster, and that the two of them trail the farm’s big horse, Zeus, around all day as a trio.
Two donkeys with similar pasts
Only part of Jack’s history is public. A Japanese-language write-up drawing on the sanctuary’s posts says he spent about ten years on a farm with almost no company, that hoof care there had been rough and painful, and that he stayed touchy about having his legs handled. Staff first feared he might turn on people. He turned out to be timid instead.
Rooster’s file is fuller. On its website the sanctuary says a visitor described meeting a mini donkey on a job site who had been kept by himself in a stall for seven years after losing his only companion. The owner agreed to surrender him after a few days of thinking it over. Rooster trembled for the whole trailer ride, had never had veterinary care, and arrived with overgrown, sharp teeth that had cut painful ulcers into his mouth. Once dental work made eating painless again, staff say his energy returned and he quickly attached himself to Zeus, the sanctuary’s largest horse.
Adding up the lonely years
Put the two histories side by side and the numbers are stark. Jack’s roughly 10 years plus Rooster’s 7 come to about 17 years that these two animals, between them, spent without another donkey. Donkeys in wealthier countries can live 30 to 50 years, so Jack’s decade alone works out to between one-fifth (10 of 50) and one-third (10 of 30) of a full lifespan.
Why a donkey needs a donkey
There is a twist in the biology. Donkeys descend from the African wild ass, and wild donkeys in dry country are largely solitary: each adult keeps its own home range instead of forming the harems wild horses live in. The bray, which lasts about 20 seconds and can be heard more than 3 kilometers (roughly 2 miles) away, may be how scattered animals keep track of one another. Feral donkeys are resourceful in deserts too; wild donkeys and horses dig desert wells that dozens of other species drink from.
Domestic donkeys, first domesticated in Africa 5,000 to 7,000 years ago, behave very differently. A 2025 systematic review of donkey husbandry in Europe, which screened 97 records, says donkeys are social animals that should live in groups of their own species. It cites earlier work showing that paired donkeys recognize their partner and prefer to stay near it, and warns that animals housed singly may suffer isolation stress. Where separation cannot be avoided, the authors say the donkey should still be able to see, smell and interact with others of its kind. One Swiss assessment they summarize found that almost half of the donkeys it looked at had no contact with another donkey at all.
The Donkey Sanctuary, a UK charity, calls the attachment pair bonding and tracks it in its own herds. Its head of welfare, Hannah Bryer, describes what it looks like: “Bonded donkeys typically graze close together, often touching noses. If you move one, the other will follow.” Pulled apart, she says, such animals may pace, paw the ground, breathe harder or bray, and some stop eating, which can lead to hyperlipemia, a potentially fatal condition.
Signs two donkeys have bonded
- They graze side by side, often nose to nose.
- When one is led away, the other tries to follow.
- Separation brings pacing, pawing, heavy breathing or braying.
- The most serious warning is a donkey that goes off its food after losing a companion.
Not every donkey ends up paired. The charity notes that some prefer the company of a whole herd, and that some arrive having grown up without other donkeys. At Rewild the friendships cross species lines: Rooster bonded with Zeus, and Jack now tags along with both.
The clip and the record
The viral video compresses months into about four minutes of soft music and captions, and its description does not say where Jack was kept or by whom. Reposts have added their own embroidery. One online write-up gave Jack’s new friend a different name and quoted unnamed caregivers; the sanctuary’s own posts name Rooster, and that is the version to trust.
For anyone keeping a single donkey, the review’s advice is concrete: if a companion of the same species is impossible, the animal should at least be able to see and smell other donkeys. Jack’s second anniversary at Rewild falls on October 5, 2027.
Further reading
- Wikipedia: Donkey
- Systematic Literature Review on Donkeys (Equus asinus): Husbandry and Welfare in Europe (Animals, 2025)
Image: Quadell, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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