RON KING, star of a new 17-episode TV reality series called “Donkey King,” set to premiere on ABC Jan. 3, sat on a metal folding chair against a fence at Oscar’s Place, his donkey rescue in Hopland. Six donkeys munched hay in the large barn’s holding pen. Occasionally the youngest would approach King for a quick pet or a confidence boost. Outside, the weather was about to turn to a solid week of rain over the holidays.
“Donkeys are more like dogs,” King said. “It has to do with the construction of their brain and limbic system. They really like to hang out with humans.”
Donkeys have big emotional centers, as big, King explained, as that of humans. That’s why they are so emotional and also why families stick together forever, he said, as he studied the matriarch of the group. “Lucille is a beautiful donkey,” he said. “I think that’s why they kept breeding her.”
King first met Lucille at an auction house in Texas. Auctioned donkeys are most often sent to Mexico for slaughter. Millions of donkeys worldwide have been slaughtered in the past 10 years — sold, stolen, or captured for their hides, which are boiled down for a traditional Chinese medicine called ejiao.
At the auction, Lucille stood with a small group of donkeys who refused to leave her side. King ended up adopting all five animals. “Those three are her daughters,” King said. “And the male — he can’t be her son because the age doesn’t work. He probably grew up at the same ranch with Lucille and the girls.”
After the five arrived, Lucille proved to be pregnant. The birth of the youngest, Lottie Mae, is one of the early harrowing episodes on Donkey King. “She is the largest donkey ever born at Oscar’s Place,” King said, “72 pounds at birth.”
King faced his own challenges. Son of a Southern Baptist preacher from rural Arkansas, he has long known both the promise and the power of reinvention. But even he, as the high-powered Manhattan media executive superintending seven fashion magazines, could not have predicted a future that involved mud, the needs of elderly donkeys, microphones and camera drones flying overhead every hour for months on end.
The former exec ended up in Hopland as a sort of rescue operation by a friend. King had been laid off from his job. “My life had kind of fallen apart. I had aged out of the career that I was in, and I didn’t know that was going to happen to me. I knew what was best for me, and I kept trying to make it happen. I kept going on interviews, and I held on so tight.” He sighed and scratched Lottie May, shoving up against him for pets.
“And as soon as I let go, what was supposed to happen happened,” he continued. “But I had to get out of my own way and admit that I didn’t know how to make it work. It takes courage to jump in the deep end about something you don’t know anything about. But as far as ending up here, life kind of kicked me, and this is where I fell.”
Just a house and a fence
King had come to Hopland to prepare the ranch for sale. Then he watched a video about the donkey trade. Donkeys, he thought, needed reinvention as much as he did. King proposed to repurpose the ranch as a donkey rescue. His friend thought he was joking but soon realized that King was not only serious but committed to making it work. Thus began Oscar’s Place, named in honor of a beloved cat.
“There was just the house and a fence,” King explained. Now there are barns, more houses, including a residence for the rescue’s vet, loafing sheds, storage areas, and miles of fencing installed across the rolling landscape, through which a creek plots a tree-studded course.
“I had no idea what I was doing when I opened it,” King said. “Almost everybody who worked here at first I got off of Craigslist. And I thought I would use volunteers.” But the volunteers often had more important things to do: a grandchild’s soccer game, a doctor appointment. “I realized that I had to pay people. It’s our biggest expense, staff. Bigger than medical care, bigger than feed.”
The rescue now employs 20 people: 19 at Hopland, and one man at a separate facility in Potter Valley, opened this August on land given to the nonprofit by a donor. The Potter Valley donkeys are considered less adoptable: “They just want to live up on a hill and be left alone,” King said, as opposed to the Hopland donkeys, who are either elderly, in quarantine after being rescued from auctions or prime subjects for adoption.
A different business model
Early on, King learned a valuable lesson. He recorded a CBS Mornings interview that aired in August 2022 about his journey from Manhattan executive to a life superintending a few hundred donkeys in Mendocino County. “We raised $200,000 in eight minutes,” he said. The episode, viewed thousands of times, still brings in donations.
“That taught me something,” King said. “In the world of animal charities, we’re all searching for the same people, bombarding them with emails and phone calls. I have this strategy: let people find me rather than me go find people. If you love donkeys, you’re going to find me.”
The world of animal rescues is rife with failure. “Most nonprofits don’t make it to five years,” King explained, noting that around 90 percent of nonprofits fail, and for animal charities it’s even worse.
“I have this strategy: let people find me rather than me go find people. If you love donkeys, you’re going to find me.”
Ron King, Oscar’s Place Adoption Center & Sanctuary
“The reason for that is that big-hearted people open up animal charities without any business background,” he said. “And this is a very complicated business to run. I say no to helping donkeys every day. Rescues have a reputation for being hoarders because they can’t say no. I am committed to building something that will live 50 years longer than me, so I can’t go into debt. We manage to a capacity very carefully. I don’t know how people run animal rescues without decades of business experience.”
Oscar’s Place must provide all the filings for state and federal compliance plus pay staff, medical and feed costs. “Workers’ comp for a donkey rescue?” he said, shaking his head. “It’s really expensive. There is so much that’s a legal requirement — you have to do it.”
No house husbands here
Buoyed by the success of his CBS interview and faced with the reality of hiring a staff that could run Oscar’s Place, King began searching for a production company. “We interviewed a lot of production companies, and we spent a lot of time being very clear on what we wanted. We needed to find somebody that could capture the heart of what we do. This isn’t Real House Husbands of Mendocino County. This is a loving, joyful story, and Monument TV captured it perfectly.”
King explained how reality shows are normally filmed. When something happens that will appear on the show, the segment is reenacted.
“But here,” King said, “everything is authentic, so if they miss something we don’t reenact it. We’re not actors. So, they were here for months, and we were mic’d and had a drone on us at all times, and then they edited out 97 percent of it.”
That means that the cameras caught everything in real time — and the project went on for three years. “So that birth really happened, and my fear when that baby got close to the fence really happened,” King said. “I watched some animal rescue programs that did not succeed. And as I watched them, I thought, ‘I don’t believe this person.’ I realized that I had to be really honest and authentic so that the viewers can feel that authenticity. I’m really happy with the final product.”
A new narrative
King hopes the 30-minute episodes will change the narrative around donkeys. “Some cartoon from a hundred years ago said that donkeys were stupid and stubborn. It’s fascinating that stuck because it’s 100 percent untrue.”
He also hopes to provide a reality check for potential adopters. “Everyone imagines donkeys on a green pasture because that’s the photos you see. But that’s an unhealthy life for them.” Donkeys are desert animals, and they can stand heat and cold nights just fine. “The number one problem with donkeys in the U.S. is obesity,” he said. “That green grass is full of sugar. Now here in Hopland, our grass turns tan in mid-May. Once the grass is no longer bright green they can eat it all day long.”
King explained that the donkey’s large limbic system is where flight and fight responses live. “Unlike horses, donkeys don’t spook. I walk behind my donkeys all the time for two interesting reasons. They have 360-degree vision because their eyes are further back on their skulls. She can see me behind her,” he said, walking behind Lucille, who continued munching hay unconcernedly. “She knows that I am not a threat. Also, their hips are double-jointed, so wherever I’m standing, she can knock me out. If you’re not trying to hurt a donkey, a donkey’s not going to try to hurt you.”
There is another critical difference between horses and donkeys. “Horses have oil between their hair and their skin,” King said. “Rain bubbles up like drops on a Teflon pan. Donkeys don’t have that oil. They just get wet, and they hate being wet.”
Since starting Oscar’s Place, King has adopted out 177 donkeys as of mid-December. In fact, Lucile and her four daughters, along with the unrelated male, have been adopted as a family and are about to head to Bodega Bay for a life of ocean breezes. As if she knew things are about to change, young Lottie May, nearly as big as Lucille, butts her head against Lucille’s side, trying to nurse, a move Mom firmly squelches.
King smiled. “We let them wean on their own.” He explained that all males entering Oscar’s Place are neutered, ensuring no births at the facility besides pregnancies from auction or owner surrenders. “I’m happy to tell Lucille these are the last babies she’ll ever have.”
A team that works — and a manager who manages
King said that the TV production has been the hardest thing he’s ever done. “Luckily, I have a full-time vet who lives here, a facilities manager, and a head of business. I couldn’t have done it otherwise, and I’m very grateful that I have a team that can take care of things.”
But he’s well aware of the downside. “The irony is that when you’re good at something, you don’t do it that often. When I was in corporate, I was really good at sales, at managing relationships and selling creative programs. They kept promoting me until I was not doing sales at all.”
Pacing around the enclosure, he stopped to stroke Lucille, who flapped her big ears around with pleasure. “It’s the same here. I am happiest when I have my hands on my donkeys. But the bigger we get and the more successful we get and the more attention we get, the less time I spend doing that. It’s unfortunate, but my eye is on the prize of this place working perfectly without me. And to do that we need a really strong foundation and that requires me being public-facing.”
Just that day, King had two more press interviews plus 15 donor packages to film. Donors can virtually adopt a donkey, and every quarter, they receive a video clip of their donkey. “Today is a heavy film day,” he said.
King left the barn and his six friends to gaze at the blindingly green hillsides, dotted with oaks and firs, surrounding the property. “It’s interesting to think what this show may do for Mendocino County,” he mused. “The time slot we’re on for ABC has 400,000 viewers. The show is beautifully shot, and it makes Mendocino look amazing. Mendocino could use some conversation that isn’t about weed and wine.”
As he walked towards the parking lot, he said, “I never quite understood the saying, ‘a labor of love’ until this happened. Now I get what it means: It’s really hard, and I love it.”
This story originally appeared in The Mendocino Voice.