Donkey Tales

Baby Daphne with Mom, Dessa Fox, and Sophie, our Golden Retriever

Donkeys bond closely to other donkeys, but what other kinds of animals do they accept as friends?  Most literature will say they hate dogs, but in truth, they will be curious about them at first, then accept them totally if the dog is not aggressive towards them.  An excellent example is the above photo.  Mother donkeys are extremely protective of their babies, yet Dessa Fox, on her first outing, is completely trusting of our dog around her baby.  It is not the nature of a donkey to be mean, but it will indeed kick or attack a dog that shows hostility towards it.  We are more concerned about the donkeys as know of incidences where packs of domestic dogs have attacked and killed them.

It seems that donkeys can befriend most any kind of animal if that other animal has a mutual affection towards the donkey.  One of our buyers raises cattle.  They had a calf that was best friends with their lone donkey.  The problem was the calf grew up and no longer hung around with the donkey, so it became a sad little donkey.  He now happily has a donkey companion, our little Max!  Another buyer had a retired race horse that needed a companion.  We don't encourage having only one donkey, but in this case we had an older barren sweetheart of a jennet named Wendy who had an independent nature.  Her new owner said the horse is convinced Wendy is her baby and lets her boss her around.  Wendy has always absolutely loved dogs as well and cavorts with theirs in the pasture.  Some of our buyers have also found that it works out just fine to pasture donkeys in with their goats, as long as the goats don't get a chance to eat up all the donkeys' feed and as long as it is not just one donkey and one goat as the goat will pester the donkey even when it's trying to sleep!  Pictured below is 2 yr. old Daphne (same as in above photo) and Brandi who enjoy pasturing with a herd of twenty goats.  They also enjoy their humans, Jennifer and Molly, who give them lots of loving!

girls, goats, and donks

Halfpint Hollow Daphne and Brandi with their humans, Jennifer and Molly.  (Note the donkeys' fancy hairclips!)