Meet Emma the miniature donkey foal! She is cute as can be and a great addition to any farm. Her personality is bright and bubbly and her pink prosthetic leg is adorable!
You heard right, little Emma has a prosthetic leg! Emma was only two days old when she was delivered to a veterinary teaching hospital with a deformed hind leg. The doctors at the hospital weren't about to put the poor baby down. Instead, the worked on amputating the limb and fitting a fully functional prosthesis to the baby donkey. It's very unusual to fit a donkey or horse for a prosthetic limb because of their narrow legs and how their weight is distributed. In the past, if the animal had an injured leg, it was euthanized.
"It has been a group effort on behalf of many caring individuals willing to go to great lengths to save her," assistant professor Dr Fred Caldwell said.
Thankfully, Emma adores her new leg (plus, it's bright pink).
"She absolutely loved it from the get-go," Dr Caldwell said in an Auburn University publication. "It was a very impressive design and she did very well in it. She has progressed to the second iteration of her prosthesis, which doesn't incorporate as much of the limb and allows her more range of motion.
"She is getting stronger; she's growing and doing wonderfully."
As Emma grows, she will need updated versions of her prosthetic leg. However, this isn't problem, because that just means she will be able to get new colors!