Donkeys and me: Ron King, co-founder of Oscar’s Place

What is your background?

I’ve been very fortunate. I’ve also been very unfortunate. When you google ‘Ron King’, you see all the fashion shows and great stuff. But I’ve been homeless twice in my life. I was a drug addict many years ago. There’s been a lot of downs. I’m grateful for that because it’s helped give me a new perspective.

Even when I was flying first class and sitting next to Donatella Versace at fashion shows, I never took any of it that seriously. I had a lot of fun, but I was very clear- let’s enjoy this for now because the magazine business in general was disappearing, and the company I worked for followed that path.

So I left, took a couple of random jobs, then COVID hit and the whole world was shut down. Things started to get pretty rough for me.

I have a friend called Philip who owns property in Northern California. He has been very successful, and wants his legacy to be animal welfare. Not specifically donkeys, but all animals. He bought this property to turn it into an animal sanctuary. He put somebody here to do that but that person spent a ton of money on a lovely house, never rescued a single animal, and their relationship fell apart.

He called me in my Los Angeles apartment and asked if I would oversee the property sale. If it wasn’t for COVID, I would have never entertained it. But it’s a gorgeous home, big swimming pool, and a beautiful part of the world. There are worse places you could be in quarantine, so I said I’d go for three months. I arrived on 1st October 2020 and I haven’t left since.

How did you end up starting Oscar’s Place?

While I was here two things happened. One is it’s very quiet, very rural, and my mind settled a little bit, which was helpful. And the other is that my best friend had asked me for years to find things that bring me joy.

I was 51 years old when I realised that there was a difference between things that I enjoy and things that bring me joy. I enjoyed flying first class, driving a Mercedes, feeling important, fashion shows - but I had no joy. On that walk when my mind was quiet, I identified three different times where I’d actually felt joy. The common denominator was that I was having an impact on something other than me. I’d been doing this all wrong.

Then I was laying out by the swimming pool wearing a Gucci swimsuit, scrolling TikTok. I don’t know why, but I got shown a video of a woman rescuing donkeys from a slaughterhouse auction in Texas. And I was like, “What? Why are people slaughtering donkeys?” I googled and read some articles on The Donkey Sanctuary website - at the time I’d never heard of The Donkey Sanctuary - and the realisation of what was happening to donkeys was awful.

What occurred to me as I was researching is there are thousands of organisations helping horses and multi-billion dollar companies, for better or worse, behind cattle and pigs, but no one is thinking about the donkey.

The idea of an underdog in trouble really appealed to me. OK, I’m joyful when I have an impact. Donkeys are in trouble. I happen to be sitting on a property that was meant to help animals, and the person that owns that property wants his legacy to be helping animals. It was my ‘aha’ moment.

I scribbled what I thought a business plan could look like. Philip came up. We were having breakfast at the local diner and I made him a proposition - “Take the property off the market, give me some funding and I’m going to make your dream come true. I’m going to rescue donkeys.”

Philip could not believe what I was saying, I lived a very different city life. I think honestly he was so shocked that he couldn’t find the words to say no. He asked if I’d spoken to the woman from TikTok and would she bring me donkeys. I walked outside, googled her and called her. A few weeks later we got our first shipment of 21 donkeys, and I’ve never looked back.

When you wrote the Oscar’s Place business plan, is it true you’d never met a donkey?

When I wrote the business plan, got funding and decided to open a donkey sanctuary, I had never met a donkey in my life. I thought, “Oh, what if I don’t like them? Or what if they don’t like me?”

I called the person in the TikTok video and said, “Before we do a big rescue, will you send me three?” She sent me Goose, Pickles and Shadow. They’re still here to this day. They were foals whose mums were likely sent off to slaughter and I fell madly in love.

One was very emotionally damaged. She was named Shadow because every time I went to see her, she was hunkered in the shadows of the barn and I couldn’t ever find her. I had to love her back. She was four months old. Now she’s a 700 pound, four and a half year old diva, who runs this whole place.

Our first actual rescue was 21 donkeys and they arrived in the middle of January 2021. Now we’re at around 390 donkeys rescued, but we also rehabilitate and rehome, so we have 187 today.

I am learning new things all the time and travel to The Donkey Sanctuary in the UK every 24 months, with a group of people, to go through a week of intensive training.

What does being CEO of Oscar’s Place involve?

As a co-founder of an animal charity, the role evolves every single year.

I founded Oscar’s Place on 1 January, 2021. Now we employ 17 people and have 187 donkeys across two properties, but if you would have asked me in my first year what my role was, I’d have said: “Scooping poop.”

For the first two years, I spent a lot of time hands on with donkeys. My favourite role is anything that involves being out in the pasture with the donkeys: feeding, scooping poop, medicating, training or grooming.

Now, four years later, I also work with donors, fundraisers, marketers and legal - chief executive stuff.

Do you have much hands on donkey time now?

We’re not open to the public. We invite people to come, but you have to have an intention to donate, volunteer or adopt.

We do one tour a day and I try my very best to be the one that leads it. Everyone says, “It’s so great that you take the time to do this.” And I always think, I’m actually not here for them. I’m out there for the donkeys and I really love it.

I also live on the property, so overnight I’m dealing with things all the time. The other night I was delivering a baby donkey at three o’clock in the morning!

What have been the challenges?

The process of becoming a farmer has been unbelievably difficult. I didn’t know a single thing. I google everything, from soil types to the difference between hay and straw, to the causes of diarrhoea, to stuck babies, water sources and wells.

I knew nothing of rural life. I think one of the reasons why I’m so tired all the time is because learning something new is exhausting. This is a very physical job too, of course. Emotionally, animals break your heart every single day. It’s a hard job. I’m physically, mentally and emotionally tired.

I was interviewed by someone who said, “I’ve interviewed hundreds of people in your position running an animal charity and know the good outweighs the bad.” My experience is that the bad outweighs the good.

When I have to decide whether animals live or die, and I have to put down animals that have a will to live, are engaged with me and know that I’m their saviour, it breaks my heart in a way I never thought I would feel. I feel the neglect, the abuse, the injuries and the death, way more than I feel the good. It takes a piece of my soul away.

I’m not being judgy, but I think people who say the good outweighs the bad are putting themselves first. Because it doesn’t really matter if I feel good more than I feel bad, if I put the donkeys first. I raised my hand for this job. I’m volunteering for more bad than good.

What are the biggest welfare challenges you see?

The majority of my donkeys come from auctions. I specifically go to an auction in Bowie, Texas, because they have a contract with a slaughterhouse in another country. I outbid the slaughterhouse.

Those donkeys, they don’t treat them very well. In the slaughter world, you sell your donkeys by the pound. The fatter, the more pregnant those donkeys are, the more money you make. We have an unbelievable number of babies here because donkeys are sold when they’re super pregnant because it makes more money.

It’s always important to note that we don’t breed here. Donkeys have the second longest gestation next to the elephant - 14 months! - so they are pregnant long before they arrive. We castrate all of our males. No breeding happens at Oscar’s Place.

Actually going to the auction, deciding who lives and who dies, and seeing the level of abuse, neglect and disease, that’s the worst part of my whole job. Then once they get here, it’s a mystery to find what’s wrong with them and help them recover. My biggest expense is supporting the recovery of donkeys I bring back from the auction.

I also take donkeys surrendered by their owners. For the most part, they are very senior people who are at the end of their life, and have had donkeys for 15-20 years. Often these donkeys are very old, very fat and they’ve been with the families a long time. It’s stressful to get on a trailer, go somewhere new, lose a family. Just keeping owner surrender donkeys alive has been a real challenge for us.

What’s happening next for you?

We are five years in and we’re in massive growth mode. We have just opened a second location and I have business plans for multiple locations across the United States.

We also have a TV show coming out in January called ‘Donkey King’. It’s to help raise our profile for fundraising, but it’s also turned into a way of changing the narrative around donkeys. Everyone who visits Oscar’s Place experiences the surprise and delight of donkeys. They all become donkey champions.

I want to introduce people to their new favourite animal, and then let people like The Donkey Sanctuary continue their work. I’m super excited about it.