A 40-acre property in Collinsville, about 70 miles north of Fort Worth, is now home to the first hospital in the United States dedicated solely to donkey care. The Center for the Advancement of Donkeys opened Sept. 5, and a day later it took in its first 14 rescued donkeys, giving them medical attention within hours instead of the days it used to take to ship them to California.
The facility was founded by Oscar’s Place, the nonprofit co-founded by Ron King, a 57-year-old former media executive who was born in Arkansas and once lived in Fort Worth, where he attended J.P. Moore Elementary School, now known as Boulevard Heights School. King first got pulled into donkey rescue in 2020 after seeing a TikTok video showing donkeys being sold for slaughter at an auction in Bowie, Texas, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. That encounter led him to become caretaker of three donkeys named Goose, Shadow and Pickles, and eventually to co-found Oscar’s Place, which opened its first rescue operation in Hopland, California, in 2021.
Before the Collinsville hospital existed, donkeys pulled from the Bowie Livestock Auction faced a grueling 32-hour trailer journey to California just to get veterinary care, according to kxii.com. King has said that shuttling sick or injured animals that far was spreading, or possibly causing, illness among some of the traveling donkeys, per the station’s report. The new Texas hospital sits roughly an hour from the Bowie auction, cutting the wait for an initial veterinary exam from about 53 hours down to about two, according to the Star-Telegram.
Inside the New Hospital Barn
The hospital barn houses 14 stalls equipped with IV hangers, electrical outlets and air conditioning, plus two isolated rooms set aside for donkeys with highly infectious diseases, per the Star-Telegram. Oscar’s Place describes the stalls as heated and cooled with concrete floors for biosecurity and a full ventilation system, according to the organization’s own account on oscarsplace.org. The broader facility also includes a covered intake arena and a recovery barn where healthier donkeys alternate between stalls and open pasture as they continue to heal, per the Star-Telegram.
The medical equipment on site includes ultrasound and X-ray technology, a pharmacy and blood-testing equipment, the Star-Telegram reports, while kxii.com’s account adds that the facility also includes a laboratory and oxygen tanks alongside temperature-controlled isolation stalls. The 40-acre property additionally offers shelters and ponds where recovering donkeys have room to heal, according to oscarsplace.org.
Banks the 30-Year-Old Survivor
Among the first arrivals was a roughly 30-year-old donkey named Banks, who showed up at auction severely underweight, neglected and suffering from hoof damage and malnutrition, per the Star-Telegram. He’s now gaining weight at the Collinsville facility, according to kten.com. Unlike many of the healthier donkeys Oscar’s Place plans to transport in groups of roughly a dozen to California for rehoming or sanctuary life, Banks will stay in Collinsville for the rest of his life because he’s thriving there, per the Star-Telegram.
Oscar’s Place says it has rescued 496 donkeys from the Bowie auction over the past five and a half years, and with the Texas hospital now paired alongside its California operations, the nonprofit says its overall capacity has grown to caring for 500 donkeys at any given time, according to oscarsplace.org. The California side of the organization includes a 116-acre sanctuary property in Potter Valley that Oscar’s Place received in 2025, where full-time veterinarian Dr. Kate Schoenhals, hired that same year, now also serves as the organization’s Head of Animals overseeing medical care and rehabilitation across both locations, according to the Ukiah Daily Journal.
Training Vets and Fighting a Global Trade
King has said the stakes driving his work extend well beyond North Texas. Donkey hides are used to make ejiao, a traditional Chinese medicine, and King told kxii.com that “Worldwide, we’re slaughtering almost 6 million donkeys a year” to meet that demand. He has visited roughly a dozen donkey-auction events as part of his rescue efforts, per the Star-Telegram.
The new center is meant to do more than treat sick animals passing through. Oscar’s Place describes it as “a place where data is collected, where vets are trained, and where the science of donkey medicine is advanced,” per the organization’s website. The Ukiah Daily Journal reports the center will offer internships, externships and residency programs for veterinary students, recent graduates and practicing veterinarians, building on existing partnerships with UC Davis and Oregon State University that Oscar’s Place hopes to extend to Texas veterinary schools. The California operation already runs a residency program with UC Davis, and King has said he wants to establish a similar donkey-veterinary residency with Texas A&M, aiming to get veterinarians interested in donkey care early in their careers, per the Star-Telegram.
King’s rescue work has also found a national television audience. Donkey King, an ABC docuseries spotlighting Oscar’s Place’s work in California, aired a 17-episode season earlier in 2026, and King is now in discussions about another season, according to the Star-Telegram. A Sept. 22 photo accompanying one report showed King among the donkeys at the Collinsville center, credited to photographer Abigail Dollins.
