Piedmont donkey rescue operation moves to Texas
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After a decade of adopting rescued donkeys from a ranch in Piedmont to people in Oklahoma, Vicki and Fred MacKenney have packed up and moved south.
The MacKenneys opened a branch of the national nonprofit Peaceful Valley Donkey Rescue at 6165 Sara Road NE in Piedmont in 2007.
Now, the house and ranch in Piedmont are for sale and the nonprofit’s new location is being set up in Alvord, Texas, a city of about 1,400 people in Wise County, just northwest of Fort Worth, Vicki said.
“I had the most awesome neighbors out there in Piedmont and we hated leaving,” Vicki MacKenney said. “Our neighbors made us feel so welcome and we are going to miss them, but we also need an adoption center in the Dallas and Fort Worth area.”
Since 2007, the MacKenneys had adopted about 250 donkeys from the Piedmont ranch. The donkeys were rescued mostly from situations of abandonment or neglect, but wild ones were also rescued from public lands and rounded up to be trained for domestic life.
“The ones with an interest in people we put them with trainers, and their jobs are to train them to get them ready for adoption for anyone to maintain them,” Vicki MacKenney said.
She said Texas has the most need of any state in the country for donkey rescues.
Fred MacKenney took a job as a project manager for a national sign company, NW Sign A donkey named Teabag is seen at the Peaceful Valley Donkey Rescue adoption center in Piedmont in 2008. The center has now moved to Texas.
Industries in Grand Prairie, Texas, in October.
“We really are heartbroken to leave Piedmont because they have been so wonderful to us,” Vicki MacKenney said.
The national headquarters for Peaceful Valley Donkey Rescue is in San Angelo, Texas. Volunteers have set up adoption centers in other states, but all donkeys are taken first to the San Angelo location after being rescued, she said. Vicki MacKenney said she will soon continue to make donkeys available for adoptions from their
new location in Alvord to anyone from Oklahoma and North Texas.
“We’re finally at a point we are adopting out more donkeys than we are taking in,” Vicki MacKenney said.
Vicki MacKenney said she is leasing land to carry on the operation in Alvord and will soon be ready to adopt more donkeys to people when the move is complete.
“We’ve come a long ways,” she said. “We are a smooth, well-oiled machine now and have some great people working for us.” For more information about donkey adoptions contact Vicki MacKenney through the organization’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ Peaceful-Valley-Donkey-Rescue-Piedmont-Oklahoma-365238863589901/