Red Rocks Stud

🌧️ Red Rocks Stud Update: Wet Season Challenges & Late Start to 2026 🐴

It’s been an exceptionally tough wet across the Top End, and like many properties, Red Rocks Stud has taken a real hit. Weeks of relentless rain have left our paddocks waterlogged, access roads cut, and the yards sitting under deep, boot‑sucking mud.

Our horses have also kept us busy. This season we’ve managed:
- Eye injuries, and infections
- Deep lacerations from a yearling being chased through a fence by wild (or local) dogs.
- Rain scald flare‑ups
- Some tender feet from weeks of rain and wet conditions.
- Never-ending clouds of flies, midgies and mozzies

All of which are being treated and are healing well. The team has been working around the clock to keep everyone comfortable, dry, and recovering safely.

Because of the conditions, all horses are currently turned out on higher ground where they can move freely and stay out of the bog. With the property inaccessible and the yards unusable, we’ll be having a late start to the season, and unfortunately won’t have horses available for viewing for the time being.

We know many of you have been waiting to view stock, and we appreciate your patience while we navigate the mud, the weather, and the recovery process. The well-being of our equines always comes first, and we’ll reopen for viewings as soon as the ground allows.

Thank you for sticking with us through this wild NT wet. We’ll keep you updated as things dry out and the team, two‑legged and four‑legged, gets back on track.

The worst neglect we see of donkeys and mules comes from people using them as livestock guardians.

Why?

Often, people hope to just toss them out without maintenance into a herd of goats, cattle or other livestock without access or budget to a farrier or vet.

This is cruel.

Many times, they will not make sure the animal has been castrated or handled, so they end up with a very feral animal that grows up unable to receive care. Sometimes they have a pair and just keep making more and more that can't be caught or given care.

Most people looking for livestock guardians don't realize donkeys need special rain and snow protection. They are desert animals. They do not thrive in cold and wet. Some weather conditions easy for cattle and horses are too hard for donkeys without special shelter protection given.

Donkeys do not need lush grass or grain. They can't have it. Either or both spell disaster for a donkey. They are meant to browse on low quality forage over lots of desert land. Founder and metabolic conditions are almost assured if they are loose on nice grass and/or get into grain These conditions destroy life quality.

Jacks or Jennys with young will often attack and kill goats and calves. It happens a lot. They like their own kind. They don't usually bond to other livestock. They can kill household dogs, too, and sure, sometimes, coyotes. But they can also be killed by predators, just like other prey animals.

Our first vet at the rescue taught that donkeys, once foundered, due to their hoof shape, can have a harder time recovering from severe rotation of their coffin bone. But many donkeys sold as livestock guards aren't trained to even receive farrier care or vetting, so if rescued, helping them timely can seem impossible.

Please take care to be an educated owner. You can help improve the lives of these animals by simply being aware.