The Budweiser Clydesdales will visit Lewiston-Auburn today and Friday

TOPSHAM – Standing on a bed of white pine shavings, a 2,300-pound horse named Donny wiggled his butt against the stable wall until its stainless steel bars bowed like guitar strings.

“It’s a good thing these guys don’t know their own strength,” handler Amy Trout said, smiling at the playful horse who was working to scratch an itch. A round hoof the size of a dinner plate banged on the wooden floor.

A moment later, the horse nuzzled up beside the blond. She scratched the trademark blaze of white between his eyes.

“They really are gentle giants,” she said. Donny hushed until the loudest sound was the hum of the metal fans above the stalls.

Inside were the Budweiser Clydesdales.

Transported in a caravan of elaborately painted tractor-trailers, the dozen draft horses arrived at the Topsham Fairgrounds on Tuesday from their farm in Merrimack, N.H.

By Wednesday morning, they’d settled in the north side of the fairgrounds in a circus-style tent. Inside were 13 stalls, one for each horse and another for a donkey named Milo.

He’s sort of an honorary Clydesdale, a holdover from the famous Super Bowl commercial that depicted a donkey aspiring to join the team of company icons.

“He’s an official member of the hitch,” Trout said of Milo, who stood sleepily in his stall Wednesday morning. “Not that we hitch him up.”

The true stars are the horses.

Bred in Scotland, they began their connection to Anheuser-Busch in 1933, when the company celebrated the repeal of prohibition. The horses pulled a wagon down St. Louis’ Pestalozzi Street with the first case of post-prohibition beer. Over the years, the Clydesdales became one of the world’s most recognizable business icons.

“This group of horses still looks like they did 73 years ago,” Trout said. Only horses with the white blaze on their faces and four white stocking feet are chosen for hitches.

Donny, Prince, Bill and the others visiting Lewiston-Auburn and the mid-coast area all look the part, with a little help from the handlers.

On Wednesday, preparation day, the chore for the eight handlers was to perform touch-up grooming on each horse and give them a rinse. There was also the stall cleaning and regular feeding – each will consume 20 to 25 quarts of feed, 50 to 60 pounds of hay and 30 gallons of water per day.

And there’s the summer care.

Though the animals do well in the heat, unless there are prolonged temperatures over 100 degrees, the horses received added electrolytes in their water, making it a kind of equine Gatorade.

When they get hot they slow down, just as anybody would, Trout said.

As clouds burned off and the sun came out Wednesday, most of the horses remained standing in their stalls, quietly munching hay. Two curled up in the wood shavings, tucking their hooves back and closing their eyes.

One by one, handler Otis Ervin used a hose to rinse the horses behind the tent, massaging the water into their hair before scraping it away. Meanwhile, Trout tended to others, using an electric razor to shave away unwanted hair.

Like an actor in a make-up chair, Donny never flinched as Trout primped his face and belly.

The handler, who stood about a 5 feet, 8 inches, was dwarfed by the horse. She couldn’t see over his back.

The Clydesdales’ size is what people most respond to. After more than four years of handling them, though, Trout said she is getting used to their stature.

“Other horses look small,” she said.