VISITORS to a garden centre are getting a kick from a surprise attraction - a white donkey foal.

The animals usually give birth in the spring but donkey Holly fell unexpectedly pregnant this year with a daughter arriving at the end of October.

David Williams had bought Holly as a Christmas present for his seven-year-old granddaughter Fern five years and had been looking for a donkey for younger sister, Belle, four.

"I wasn’t expecting a foal and she came as a bit of a shock," said farmer David: "She had been running with a jack donkey and the people who owned it didn’t think she had caught the jack.

"I went down to see to the donkey one day and it looked as if there was a sheep underneath her. When I got to her it wasn’t a sheep at all but a baby donkey and she was as white as a sheet. She had only just been born. She had come out of the blue.

"I thought she could be an early Christmas present for Belle and she has saved me from going Christmas shopping."

David’s daughter Sarah Powell shared the news of the family’s new arrival, named Molly, on Facebook - leading to visitors calling at David’s Llethercynon Farm, at Garthbrengy near Brecon.

The family then offered to loan both donkeys to the Old Railway Line Garden Centre in Three Cocks, near Talgarth where they form part of a Christmas display alongside reindeer.

"A few people had been coming to see them as the foal had been born at such an unusual time of the year and as she is white, which is unusual. We then thought to take them to where the people are."

David said he bought Holly at an auction at Llanybydder in Carmarthenshire and only then realised the donkey shared the exact same date of birth as Fern.