Thinking about a Donkey

One more thing: both horses and donkeys, especially donkeys, are long lived creatures. Grade (mixed breed) horses are very difficult to rehome, I would assume the same is true of donkeys.

My sister has been trying to find a home for two ponies for more than a year, still no luck.
 
Sometimes I think you really are the most interesting man in the world...donkeys, MU2s, tractors, semi trucks...what’s next?!
 
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Timbeck2 said:
My wife has three miniature donkeys roaming around our back yard. I'll just say that the world is their bathroom and they love dog food. Other than the fact that they keep the weeds in check (we're on little over an acre) I don't have much use for them.
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No way! Man when are we flying down to KTUS and having breakfast at your place?! :p
My wife would love those things
 
CC268 said:
Sometimes I think you really are the most interesting man in the world...donkeys, MU2s, tractors, semi trucks...what’s next?!
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I did once take off in fog so thick I couldn’t see my instruments.
 
CC268 said:
Sometimes I think you really are the most interesting man in the world...donkeys, MU2s, tractors, semi trucks...what’s next?!
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Well, he could go see a man about a horse.....
 
wsuffa said:
Well, he could go see a man about a horse.....
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yup

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One of our neighbors has three miniature donkeys to look after his cattle. They’re outside 24-7, just need water and grass. Plan for a vet and a farrier once in a while. No big deal.

But get at least two. They are herd animals and don’t do well solo.
 
FormerHangie said:
One more thing: both horses and donkeys, especially donkeys, are long lived creatures. Grade (mixed breed) horses are very difficult to rehome, I would assume the same is true of donkeys.

My sister has been trying to find a home for two ponies for more than a year, still no luck.
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If your sister is anywhere near the MD, VA, PA area, pm me. Maybe I can help.

Regardless of breeding, if a horse has a job and does it well, they will always find a home where they are valued. It's the animals that either have no training, or are trained poorly, (or are unmanageably lame) that stick around like a bad smell. We had a gelding once that looked like it was put together with spare parts, but was a dream in the hunt field. Would jump anything you put in front of it, canter along quietly in company, stand at checks. We sold it to an older woman who just wanted a quiet, reliable solid citizen, and had been around horses long enough not to fall for a pretty face. The thing lived like a king the rest of it's life.

When I die, I want to come back as a rich woman's horse.
 
FormerHangie said:
<snip>

Oh, also remember that donkeys aren't silent.

<snip>.
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When I was a kid, our neighbor had a pasture behind our place with two donkeys. They were better than a rooster for getting you up at sunrise, aka loud and early in the morning.
My Dad got a new Job and we moved to another town 300 miles away. Within about a month we woke up to the same noise, looking in the pasture across from our place there were two donkeys, that looked amazingly similar to the previous ones. Coincidentally the same two donkeys had moved 300 miles to our backyard again. I don't remember if the owner had sold them, or moved them to a relatives places or what the story was. We moved again within a few months, the donkeys didn't follow us, probably because we didn't have any pastures next door.

Brian
 
If coyotes are your concern, though, a better solution might be a varmint call and an AR15 with a night scope.
 
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Chip Sylverne said:
If your sister is anywhere near the MD, VA, PA area, pm me. Maybe I can help.

Regardless of breeding, if a horse has a job and does it well, they will always find a home where they are valued. It's the animals that either have no training, or are trained poorly, (or are unmanageably lame) that stick around like a bad smell. We had a gelding once that looked like it was put together with spare parts, but was a dream in the hunt field. Would jump anything you put in front of it, canter along quietly in company, stand at checks. We sold it to an older woman who just wanted a quiet, reliable solid citizen, and had been around horses long enough not to fall for a pretty face. The thing lived like a king the rest of it's life.

When I die, I want to come back as a rich woman's horse.
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They're in central Florida. They've never been used for anything, they're too small for an adult to ride, and they were never trained to pull anything. At their age, I'm not sure how much success anyone would have training them. Thy're basically pets. I think she took them because no one had been able to find a home for them and she had open pasture, and they've been there ever since, more than 10 years now.
 
B29B58B8-C06F-4D90-A349-BB2A9826E2FB.jpeg First we got three goats (to do some of my mowing), then starting hearing more and more coyotes at night, so we got a llama as a guard animal.
Llamas are the BEST!
Don’t challenge fences much. Are clean and well behaved (they pick a spot to repeatedly poop at and have pelleted stool that makes good fertilizer), we trimmed his hooves and sheared him once yearly and vaccinated then
Pics may follow

Be aware, though, that llamas don’t like dogs any more than they do coyotes until that dog gets accepted as part of the pack.
 
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My experience is that donkeys are smarter and more personable than horses; for ruminants, they aren't nearly as stupid as some, like sheep or cows. Then again, they ain't gonna outsmart many mammals, either, except maybe the great cats, who are almost supernaturally stupid.

So if you like affable, semi-bright, fairly low maintenance critters, donkeys are a good choice. Also, for some reason, like horses, they seem to get along with dogs real well - always thought that was weird, dogs being predators and all. A buddy who ran a stable had a big, mean, moronic, stallion as a tenant - damned dangerous critter - we'd put my friend's large golden retriever in with the stallion and it would calm him down. Still couldn't trust that horse, but he quieted down enough you could tend to him. Carefully.
 
.....and calling up coyotes ain’t as easy as you’d think - they are wiley and mostly nocturnal.
 
Think alpaca.

Alpaca fleece is the fur harvested from an alpaca. It is a soft, durable, luxurious and silky natural fiber. While similar to sheep’s wool, it is warmer, not prickly, and has no lanolin, which makes it hypoallergenic. Alpaca is naturally water-repellent and difficult to ignite.

http://www.alpaca.com/alpacafiber.cfm

Make your own blankets....

https://www.zazzle.com/alpaca+blankets
 
Sundancer said:
My experience is that donkeys are smarter and more personable than horses; for ruminants, they aren't nearly as stupid as some, like sheep or cows. Then again, they ain't gonna outsmart many mammals, either, except maybe the great cats, who are almost supernaturally stupid.

So if you like affable, semi-bright, fairly low maintenance critters, donkeys are a good choice. Also, for some reason, like horses, they seem to get along with dogs real well - always thought that was weird, dogs being predators and all. A buddy who ran a stable had a big, mean, moronic, stallion as a tenant - damned dangerous critter - we'd put my friend's large golden retriever in with the stallion and it would calm him down. Still couldn't trust that horse, but he quieted down enough you could tend to him. Carefully.
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Just point of fact, donkeys aren't ruminants. They only have one stomach, and all their food intake eventually goes through a funnel shaped section called the cecum, just like horses. The reason why both they and horses need constant access to water is if the forage gets too dry, it clogs up the funnel and the animal colics, which is something you don't want. Since they can't barf, the impaction only gets worse eventually requiring $urgery.

As far as stallions go, we don't allow them on the place. As the saying goes, yea though they walk through the valley, they shall fear no evil, for they are the baddest son of a ***** in the valley. And they know it. But even a gelding knows he can kick a dog to kingdom come. Though any of them can shy at anything for any reason, animate or inanimate, it doesn't matter. The stories I could tell ya...
 
Donkey's won't get out of the way when you want to land on your private strip, they are worse than Goats in that regard.

The Coyote's are a problem, even up here in Olathe. Down there you have more creative options available to you.
 
Chip Sylverne said:
Just point of fact, donkeys aren't ruminants. They only have one stomach, and all their food intake eventually goes through a funnel shaped section called the cecum, just like horses. The reason why both they and horses need constant access to water is if the forage gets too dry, it clogs up the funnel and the animal colics, which is something you don't want. Since they can't barf, the impaction only gets worse eventually requiring $urgery.

As far as stallions go, we don't allow them on the place. As the saying goes, yea though they walk through the valley, they shall fear no evil, for they are the baddest son of a ***** in the valley. And they know it. But even a gelding knows he can kick a dog to kingdom come. Though any of them can shy at anything for any reason, animate or inanimate, it doesn't matter. The stories I could tell ya...
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Ah, I stand corrected. . .and yeah, that stallion was mean and stupid. Two person job to tend to almost anything that he needed.
 
I know a guy that got his ass whipped by a llama. He and a buddy were fishing and pulled the boat up on the bank to try fishing from the shore. They went separate directions. One of them ran into a llama who was roaming with a herd of cattle. That llama didn't want him around, so it commenced chasing him. He had to fight that llama all the way back to the boat, getting knocked down and stomped in the process. His buddy showed up later, saw him sitting in the boat smoking a cigarette, looking like hell, covered in grass, bleeding, and was like "What the hell happened you?!?" To hear them tell the story - I've never laughed harder!
 
Don't know much about donkeys, except from Shrek. We had two mares and a gelding for a long time. Nugget was his name. He started out as a sulky pony, but bolted when hitched when the wife made a sudden move to catch her hat as it was blowing off her head. My grandfather bought him, and turned him into a saddle pony.

He was always a little bit ornery, but was controllable. We had a gas pump on the ranch, and an overhead power line from the machine shed to the pump. My grandfather didn't like the height restriction the power line caused, so he took it down and ran it through a culvert between the machine shed and the pump.

Everything was fine until it rained. I was riding Nugget on the wet ground, and he stepped on an electrically hot spot. It knocked him to his knees. He couldn't get up, and started whinnying until my oldest brother realized what was going on and pulled the circuit breaker. Nugget survived with no lasting damage, and he was good as gold around me until he passed.

The moral of the story is, if you are going to run power cable under ground, make sure they are ground rated. The life you save may be your horse's.

Also, Nugget was very protective of his "girls". A neighbor brought his stallion over, probably twice Nugget's size, to help move cattle. Nugget was OK, until the stallion got a little too close to his "girls". I was riding him, and the neighbor was riding the stallion. Nugget reared up to challenge the stallion, and luckily, the stallion couldn't be bothered.
 
My daughter's friend, the one with the emu, also had a couple horses. One of them always ran away when it saw her, I never heard why and I'm not sure she ever knew either. But for some reason that horse didn't want to be around her. She put on some sort of Halloween mask and walked over to the fence, the horse was curious to see who it was and came over to check her out. Once the horse was right up against her, she took off the mask and the horse ran away.
 
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