The Queen played surrogate mother to a group of orphaned baby elephants on Wednesday, feeding them formula milk at a sanctuary in Kenya.

Camilla, who was later joined by the King, was in her element at the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust Elephant Orphanage in Nairobi National Park as she took charge of the milk bottle.

“They are so lovely. This is fantastic,” she said after feeding a succession of young elephants who have lost their mothers.

She joked: “Is that the naughty corner?” as she pointed at a spot where some of the larger, more restless ones were placed.

The group, among 27 orphans being cared for at the sanctuary, came racing down from the undergrowth when they spotted it was feeding time.

Camilla bottle-fed an elephant calf called Mzinga, one of the centre’s youngest at a year and a half old, first.

“There we are. All finished now,” she said, as the little elephant guzzled her milk down in a matter of seconds.

Head keeper Edwin Lusichi said they had been orphaned for a number of reasons, sometimes as a result of poaching or humans coming into conflict with wildlife, but also in some cases simply because their mothers died of natural causes or became separated from them.

Camilla also fed two other young elephants, Talek, a 15-month-old female, and Mokogodo.

“She is one year old and she is the youngest,” said Mr Lusichi.

“Her favourite was this one, Taroho. He is a little young, 15 months,” the keeper said.

The appearance of Raha, a year-old baby rhino who trotted over to see the Queen when she was joined by the King, almost eclipsed the young elephants and gave Camilla the opportunity to stroke the youngster, which nibbled a keeper’s trousers.

Raha was brought into the orphanage in September last year when she was only a few weeks old.

Roan Carr-Hartley whose grandmother Dame Daphne founded the orphanage said: “She’d been attacked by hyenas and jackals and her mother had left her.

“Her whole tail was chewed off and much of her abdomen was chewed off. She underwent several operations to get this far.”

The Queen had begun the day wearing an Anna Valentine dress embroidered with images of giraffes before changing into a Fiona Clare outfit with another animal theme for the orphanage visit – elephant and peacocks.

She also sported a pair of brown lace-up Victorian-style ladies boots.

Earlier Camilla visited a donkey sanctuary and quipped about the “rather large haul” of souvenirs she bought, that left her aide promising to repay stallholders after she ran out of cash.

Camilla bought jewellery, blankets, a basket and some cashew butter from a temporary market at the Nairobi sanctuary run by the Kenya Society for the Protection and Care for Animals in partnership with the equine charity Brooke East Africa.

She spent 4,000 Kenyan shillings held by an aide but by the time she bought a blanket from another stall there was only enough cash to pay for half and the aide took details of stall holders to pay them later.