Your veterinarian is absolutely right about needing to pay attention to the carbohydrate intake on donkeys, as they are so much more efficient than horse in extracting nutrients from feeds. As with any equid that is not keeping adequate weight you always want to check the condition of their teeth very carefully, even including a radiograph in older animals. We recently had one with a broken tooth root but looked normal on a regular oral exam. Parasites should also be considered, especially if pasture is available even part of the year. Assuming these are not problems, older animals can need extra nutrition. We just use Purina Equine Senior. One very old donkey we have gets a ½ cup three times a day with two tablespoons of flax meal. She does fine even though all her cheek teeth are expired. She also gets hay and straw with the other donkeys, so we include some psyllium with her Senior in the form of a moist mash. This lubricates her intestines and prevents impactions from the roughage. We use this approach and recommend it to donkeys with missing or expired teeth. Feeding some carrot slices with cucumber, celery, beet greens (not the whole beet), and chard increases their intake and they really like it. You can feed a cup or two of that mix without being concerned about excessive sugar or starches.

I hate to say this, but you probably would be best cutting the Red Maple down. I saw some really bad cases of Red Maple toxicity when I was in Tennessee. The trouble is that the dry leaves are the ones that are toxic and it would not take many to kill a mini. You would need to be scrupulous about making sure any dry leaves were cleaned up and could not blow into the donkey's pen. Minis particularly are a bit food obsessive and will chew on anything. Tree removal would be safest.

You need to have your veterinarian back out to examine your donkey. Cushing's disease is bad enough metabolically, but it is associated with other conditions that may make a donkey depressed such as infections of their gums or teeth, abscesses, laminitis, and liver disease. All these are serious and should be investigated and either ruled out or treated in a donkey with Cushing's. Another possibility is that you donkey did not like the taste of the Pergolide and stopped eating as a result. Certain donkeys will do this with medications. The problem is that when donkeys stop eating their fat tissue can release fatty acids into the blood stream which will cause symptoms like you are seeing. They can also seriously damage their liver. A blood triglyceride test can tell you if this has happened and should be done right away. The solution is to give glucose IV and provide nutritious feed right away. In some cases, this has to be administered as a gruel by nasogastric tube. Actual toxicity from Perolide is very rare and requires a large overdose. This is a serious situation and having your veterinarian out right away is the best thing to do.

Thank you for the thoughtful response and guidance! It’s reassuring to hear that our approach aligns with sound donkey care principles. I’ll explore using a senior balancer with trace supplements and consider a mixed diet of hay, straw, and fresh “salad” for variety and balance. Monitoring their weight and growth carefully, especially with the challenges of Ohio’s climate and pasture variability, is excellent advice. I’ll also check out the resources from The Donkey Sanctuary and look into the Donkey Welfare Symposium—it sounds like a valuable event. Thank you for pointing us in the right direction!

Reese, foxtails are not toxic in any way. They can leave their awns in an animal's eye, but this only happens when they are really deep and thick. If this was a concern you could mow the pasture once. Donkeys can eat foxtails, thistles, cactus, and most other plants just fine. The toxic ones are the ornamentals like Oleander, which is extremely toxic. It should not be found in a high desert pasture. As with most donkey nutrition issues is the fact that donkeys are extremely efficient, and if there are a lot of plants of any kind donkeys will tend to get fat on them. I have seen this in dry native pasture in the Sierra Foothills in California. So I would just make sure that they are not gaining weight. Again, mowing to decrease biomass will help with this.

As far as weaning from timothy to straw, there is no real problem as far as digestive or metabolic upset, since the straw is much higher if fiber and lower in digestible calories. However, your minis are likely to not like the straw very much at first and may not eat it. This is a problem because, depending on other factors, such as the mini's weight (are the fat?) a period of anorexia could trigger hyperlipemia, in which a mass of fat is released from the adipose tissue and can damage the liver and other organs. So, I would start adding the straw as 10 % of their diet and double the amount every week. Depending on their body condition you might also want to keep them on some level of hay permanently, maybe just ½ pound a day. You could also look for alternatives to timothy , like Teff, Orchard Grass, or Rye. Again, in small amounts. Do be sure that the straw you get does not have any significant amounts of the wheat heads left from combining (harvesting).

While the ideal of feeding barley straw is great, as you have found out, it is very hard to find the stuff in most parts of the USA. Wheat straw works just fine, given a couple of caveats. First, the straw should not contain a lot of actual wheat heads, because they contain exactly the high starch non-structural carbohydrates that you are trying to avoid by feeding straw. Fortunately, modern combines are pretty efficient at removing the grain part of the wheat plant at harvest, but it is still a good idea to check. If you find a wheat head in a half bale of straw, that isn't too bad. If you find several heads in each flake, that is a problem, and that straw should not be fed to donkeys. It is also undesirable to have a lot of dirt clods in the straw. This happens when the field is rough and the cutting bar on the combine is set low to the ground. You can tell if a bale has a lot of dirt in it because they bales will be much heavier. A three-twine straw bale should not weigh 100 lbs. as you would expect with hay. Finally, you want to get long stem bedding straw. Some straw is cut so that the stems are short, or it is chopped, making it more digestible for cows. This "feed straw" is an inexpensive diet for cows that are not currently being milked, do not have a calf, or are in early stages of gestation. The longer stemmed bedding straw gives the donkey more to do, because it requires more chewing, and it has fewer digestible calories. For this reason, the Standee chicken bedding, even though it is made of straw, would not be a good feed for you donkey. It certainly is not going to make your donkey sick, but it will tend to make it too fat. Also, I suspect that it is a lot more expensive than buying straw in a standard bale. It does depend on what part of the country you are in, but you can generally find bedding straw easily by going to a feed supplier that services racetracks or county fairs. Bedding straw is universally used to bed racehorses and show livestock. The supplier may tell you that this straw is not for feeding, but that is because they don't feed donkeys, and don' know. I hope this is helpful.

Your gelded jack may just have the genetics to have an "angular" body. Some donkeys tend to have a thin "top line" and a larger abdomen, like a dairy cow. So, this may not be that abnormal, and you are right to slow his feed intake when you noticed that he was building a fat pad on the top of his neck. Donkeys tend to store fat in a lot of parts of their body, but the top of the neck is one of the first and most prominent. It is like a camel's hump (also a fat deposit). There is nothing wrong with being able to see his ribs. In fact, a donkey (or a horse) in ideal weight you might expect to at least be able to feel the ribs. Looking at your donkey's diet I would consider the quality of the hay. It should be mold free and not have a lot of grain or legume (clover or alfalfa) in it. The diet should also include trace minerals like zinc, copper, and manganese, and not too much iron. The iron is needed but too much of it will decrease the absorption of other minerals. There are a number of trace minerals and "ration balancers' on the market. They are all pretty similar. To get your donkey to eat their mineral supplement, you can mix it with some tasty vegetables. We use carrots and add chard, celery, or cucumbers (in season). These are mostly fiber and water, so they don't add a lot of calories. It would also be a good idea to have his manure checked for parasites. Even though you are deworming frequently, don't assume that you have controlled parasites. They can be really sneaky. So , it is good to check.

Thank you for sharing these insights! It’s clear that transitioning to a more appropriate diet is critical for our donkeys' long-term health. I’ll focus on a coarse grass and straw diet, aiming for 1.5-3% of body weight, while carefully monitoring their weight with a tape and tracking weekly progress. Including a mineral supplement mixed with a low-sugar treat and enriching their environment with grooming, walks, and safe chewables sounds like an excellent plan. I’ll consult The Donkey Sanctuary resources for further guidance and appreciate the tip on using wheat straw. Your detailed advice is incredibly helpful!

It is hard to tell from your description what may be going on with your donkey. However, this is serious just based on the fact that treatment for lice is not effective. You need to get your donkey evaluated by a veterinarian. The possible problems could be as simple as bad teeth or as serious as cancer. Animals that become heavily infested with skin parasites like lice and mites usually have another underlying problem. If you can send me your location, the age of the donkey, how long you have had it, what you are feeding, and what treatments have been done, I may be able to help you or at least refer you to somebody who can.

I imagine if they were on a 1.5 acre lot with 19 horses (maybe mules?) they would be traumatized. So, donkeys being individuals it may take a while for them to be more "donkey like". I would cut out the sweet feed completely right now. There is no advantage to continuing to feed it and it is making them fat, which will be hard to treat after a while. Even free choice timothy/orchard grass is likely to lead to obesity in a mini if they don't get much exercise. They will eventually get used to the straw, but that is going to require that they don't have a lot of other tastier things to eat. That isn't being mean, it is just good for their health. Minis especially are food motivated, and the need to have things to chew on. Brambles, berry bushes, thistles, and other weeds work great and The Donkey Sanctuary has good information on other plants that donkeys can munch on at https://www.thedonkeysanctuary.org.uk/for-owners/poisonous-plants-trees/safe-trees-for-donkeys

To keep our donkeys happy they get a "salad" of sliced carrots with their supplement in the afternoon, and we will replace some of the carrot with celery, chard, or cucumber depending on the season. Bananas might be fed as a special treat, but they are very high in soluble starch and sugar, so I would be very careful about that. I think you are going at this the right way in general. I would just give it time, as it can take a traumatized donkey a long time to adjust to a better life.

It is hard to say exactly how to approach this without knowing which minerals (metals) are high in their diet. Generally, this is either due to high concentrations in the volcanic soil or because there are local plants that preferentially concentrate certain minerals OR a combination of both. If the problem is high iron content this tends to interfere with the uptake of other essential trace minerals like copper and zinc. Relative copper deficiency can cause coat color changes in cattle. So, this might be what is going on. You can have pasture plants and hay analyzed for minerals and I would imagine that diagnostic labs in Hawaii could do this, but if not they are certainly available on the mainland. I would start by having the feed analyzed and asking the state agriculture department if they are aware of particular plants that concentrate minerals. In the meantime, I would feed hay or straw that had a mineral analysis done previously. Don't feed alfalfa hay however, as it is way too high in digestible energy for donkeys, and they will rapidly get obese, which is hard to fix after it happens.

Yes your Poitu donkey could have a congenital hip problem causing muscle atrophy over her back and hips. However, more likely this is a result of the PPID, as animals with this endocrine problem tend to redistribute fat to their lower abdomen and lose subcutaneous fat on their backs, along with muscle. They do this irrespective of treatment which is mostly directed at preventing the most serious consequence of the disease, which is laminitis. It is really important that her teeth are in good shape too, as that will effect her ability to digest important nutrients. You could increase her protein intake by adding a small amount of equine senior to her diet. In addition, she should be getting a trace mineral supplement. Just a mineral block is not adequate in most cases. We use California Trace, but there are many on the market that are about the same thing.

The body form changes that you describe are typical for animals with Pituitary Adenomas (sometimes caused Cushing's disease in horses and donkeys). It is not clear from you question what type of hay you are feeding and how much, by weight. It would also be useful to know the condition of your donkey's teeth, as that can have a significant effect on an animal's ability to digest feed, especially roughage. Having a skilled dentist or a veterinarian examine his mouth would be a good idea. Donkeys with Cushing's are prone to dental problems and their teeth should be examined regularly. If the loss of mass over the hind quarters is muscle, some exercise would be very likely help, too.

I have attached a brief paper on refeeding starved or malnourished donkeys. As this states, the recommendations are based on what has worked in horses, simply because the research has not been done in donkeys. They make a good point in making sure that you have a veterinary examination, to be sure that there are no sever dental problems and, in this donkey's case, to insure that there are not musculoskeletal or neurologic problems that are keeping the donkey from standing. A blood test for triglycerides and liver enzymes would also be a good idea, because if these are high the donkey may need IV Dextrose to avoid life threatening hyperlipemia. As far as the actual feeding goes:
Clean water should be always available and if it is very cold where you are it should be slightly warmed. Trough heaters are available in cold climates.
Feed a soft, highly nutritious pelleted or chopped feed. This can be soaked in warm water to make it easier for an animal with oral problems to eat. This should be fed at 75% of what the feed sack recommends initially, gradually building to 100% over a week. The feedings should be divided into 5 or 6 feedings per day (every 4 hours or so). We have had very good results with Purina Equine Senior. The brand names used in this article are from the UK, and won't be familiar to your feed store.
Do not use very high molasses or straight grain feeds. They are too high in soluble carbohydrates and can cause digestive problems. We have used cooked oatmeal in 1 cup quantities for animals that are not eating anything at all.
Make good quality grass hay readily available at all times. Do not use alfalfa, except in small quantities. There is sufficient protein in the concentrated feed mentioned above.
Make sure that a recumbent animal is bedded in soft, dry bedding, and that if this donkey is not standing, that you move it from one side to the other to avoid the development of sores.
Gradually increase the feed intake, and start switching to primarily hay as the donkey starts gaining strength.
From the start a trace mineral supplement and salt should be available. There is a lot of misinformation around about feeding only white salt. This is none sense and having a mineral supplemented salt is fine. We use California Trace, but there are a variety of mineral supplements available that work just fine. If the hay and pellets used are of good quality, vitamin supplements are no necessary and don't give vitamin shots.
If you need to help this donkey to stand, use the Rescue Loop System. https://loopsrescue.com
Loops Rescue System
Large Animal Sedation & Anesthesia EMERGENCY FIELD GUIDE
loopsrescue.com

The effects of vaccines are not dose related in the way that drugs like antibiotics or tranquilizers are. So, you need to expose the immune system to a certain level of foreign material (the stuff in the vaccine that stimulates an immune response and is called an "antigen"). Regardless of the size of the animal their immune system is going to need the same amount of antigen exposure to trigger a response and develop immunity. While splitting vaccines may work, you run the risk of not properly immunizing your minis to deadly diseases like tetanus and encephalitis in doing this. For this reason full amount of vaccines should always be used.

Some increase in neck crest fat is common in donkeys that have a Body Condition Score at or just above ideal weight, regardless of the scale that you are using. Donkeys store fat in this location preferentially and, great savers that they are, will enlarge their crests at the slightest opportunity. Having a Pituitary Adenoma ( referred to as "Cushing's Disease" in equids) makes this more likely as the Pergolide (Prascend) only helps with symptoms, but does not cure the disease. It will be difficult to keep him happy if he cannot eat any roughage, and it would be interesting to know what kind of tumor is preventing him from eating hay. This is because the simplest thing would be to dilute his diet with long stem straw. However, if the tumor cannot be treated this may not be an option. The grain will significantly contribute to his weight gain and unless donkeys are debilitated or lactating, we do not recommend feeding grain at all. Chopped roughage or high fiber pellets, soaked to make them easy to swallow, might be a solution. You can add Psyllium (about 1/3 cup daily) to "lubricate" swallowing and digestive passage in animals that cannot eat hay for some reason. Adding a mineral supplement, like California Trace, to the diet would balance all trace mineral requirements. Finally , for donkeys that get bored because their diet is consumed too fast, environmental enrichment by spreading out feeding stations that they have to travel to one after the other or just taking them for hikes really helps. The extra exercise would also help keep him from getting fat.

Zinc taken orally has a very low toxicity for all species. Unfortunately, the research to establish a "toxic dose" for donkeys has not been done. The main concerns excess Zinc in the diet are that, because it is a metallic mineral, like Copper, Iron, Manganese, and Cadmium, it can interfere with the essential bone growth trace mineral Copper and also Iron, which has a large number of functions in the body. We only cases where this caused a problem were in young, growing horses. So, in an old miniature donkey Zinc excess causing a Copper deficiency would be really unlikely. Actually, excess Iron in soils, and the forage plants that grow from them, are more likely to cause Zinc deficiency. This is why supplements, like California Trace, claim that their Zinc containing product is necessary to overcome the high Iron levels in many horse and donkey feeds. Further, the USDA regulates the amount of minerals that can be in a supplement. Commonly used ones, such as those you mentioned would have safe, often times low, levels of these trace minerals. I would not worry about them for your donkey.

with an obese mini you are indeed dealing with a difficult problem. So I consulted with the most direct and practical donkey manager that I know, my wife, Cindy Davis RVT. She is laser focused on good donkey nutrition and here is what she said:
My name is Cindy Davis. I am Eric Davis' wife and the person here who is in charge of our feeding program. We do not have a huge herd, but have cared for as many as 26 donkeys at a time and have treated no fewer than 13 (again not a huge number but enough to form an opinion) obese donkeys, 6 of whom were morbidly obese. I have both questions and information that I would like to ask you/share with you.

Firstly, I have used Thyro L quite successfully in 3 donkeys. These were the last three donkeys that I treated and I would not hesitate to use it again as I do believe that it works. I think your problem is related to the volume of feed your animal is getting.

Secondly, I am curious as to how much the hay you are feeding this donkey weighs? You will need a good scale to determine this, and frankly, you can not diet a donkey, particularly a mini donkey, without carefully weighing out their feed. I use a Salter model 235 6M (we weigh all of the hay we feed to the donkeys, ALL OF IT, three meals a day for 16 donkeys and a mini mule). I had tried several fishing scales but they broke frequently and were simply not accurate enough. The Salter is a workhorse, is well made and most importantly accurate!

Thirdly, you need to know what your donkey should weigh. Since we do not know your donkey I can guess, or you can consult your veterinarian. For the overweight miniature donkeys I have treated (total of 5) I would use 300 to 350 pounds as my ideal body weight (again, check with your veterinarian).

An equid on a diet should be fed 1% of its ideal body weight in dry matter (many donkeys meet their caloric needs, even when only eating straw, at 1.3% of their body weight, so you have no chance changing a morbidly obese mini donkey's weight if you feed more than 1%). This means that a donkey on a weight loss regimen of this ideal weight should get a total of 3 to 3.5 pounds of total feed per day.

DO NOT CHANGE THE DIET OVERNIGHT. I would reduce the amount of hay in a way that it took two weeks to get to a reasonable amount. I currently feed two miniature donkeys. They each receive roughly a half a pound of hay a day. The hay is shaken to remove as much higher calorie seed as we can. Even at this level with wheat straw in their diet they are slightly heavy.

None of the obese donkeys I have fed have been candidates for free feeding straw. There is always some grain in the straw and the more of it you feed, the greater the chance that they are simply foraging for the grain and other higher calorie tidbits they can find in it and leaving the stems behind. Even the straw we feed to our main herd is titrated. We feed them just enough that there is a light layer of straw on the ground below the feeders to minimize waste. I currently feed two miniature donkeys.

My recommendation for helping your donkey become its best self would be to (assuming that she should weigh 350 pounds again, consult your vet). Give this plan at least two months before you decide if it is working.

Transition to this diet over a two week period.

1. Put Martha back on Thyro-L
2. Weigh everything!
3. Feed 1/2 pound of hay a day mixed into 3 pounds of straw a day, fed in a medium hole (1 1/4 inch holes) hay net to slow eating down.
4. Discontinue feeding beet pulp.
5. Discontinue yeast extract. Donkeys have very low dietary protein needs and these can be met by straw, even if they are not getting any hay.
5. Feed a one ounce scoop of either flax meal or chia seeds but discontinue one or the other. (if no weight loss is seen after two months, discontinue the flax meal and see if that makes a difference).
6. Shake the straw to remove any grain that might be present.
7. If Martha has access to any grass, discontinue it immediately.

Reevaluate diet in two months. Please let us know how this goes,

The only things that I would add are:
There is no advantage to giving thyroid hormones by injection and you run the risk of negatively effecting the normal diurnal hormone rhythms. There is no research on the safety of injectable Thryo L in donkeys.
Since fat deposition is affected by "calories in vs. calories out", putting your mini on an exercise regimen would also help. This can be done in a variety of ways including walking or hiking with your donkey, or making an exercise trail that encourages them to walk some distance for food and water.

While it is difficult to make recommendations on the nutritive value of a hay without having specific data on the forage being considered. Besides things like plant species, there are also considerations such as the maturity of the crop when harvested (more mature means higher fiber and less digestible calories), the way it is dried (incomplete curing and raking can result in the growth of molds that decrease nutrition), and the type of packaging (large round bales tend to have lower quality than square bales). However, Bermuda (Tifton) and Jigg hays are pretty similar, with Jigg having somewhat more digestible energy and protein. Paradoxically, what you are looking for is LOWER digestibility and LOWER protein when feeding donkeys because they are SO MUCH more efficient in digesting forage than horses. As a result, many hays that are grown and marketed for horses cause donkeys to get fat and develop metabolic problems. At least in California, where weather conditions and land prices tend to result in really high quality hay production, we find that it is difficult to keep donkeys in good body condition without feeding at least half of the forage ration in wheat straw. We would use barley straw if we could get it, but is not commonly grown in this state. This is NOT Wheat or Barley HAY. You don't want that, because the grain in it is too rich for donkeys. You want the stuff that they use for bedding horses. Basically, regardless of which hay you choose, look for forage that is well cured and contains no mold or dust, and is high in fiber and low in digestible energy. Tifton or Jigg could fulfill either these requirements, but look for higher fiber and lower protein

In Mexico donkeys live on dried corn stalks. The only problem is how much actual corn grain is left in the bales with the dried stalks. It would be necessary to scrupulously pick out any before feeding it to your donkey, especially if he is foundered. Also, although corn stalks generally have lower digestible energy than most hays, they do have more calories than straw. So , you would have to remain vigilant that you do not overfeed your donkey, again, because of the chronic laminitis. Another option would be to feed wheat straw, which is available in most parts of the country and usually half the price of hay. You want the long stem stuff that they use for bedding for horses. Donkeys do well on a diet of straw, with a little hay, and appropriate trace mineral supplements. I do not know what part of the country your are in, but if baled corn stalks are available, straw probably is too. Barley straw is the best, but rare in most areas. So we have used wheat straw for years and it works fine.

I am not surprised that your donkeys are eating grain out of cow feces. They have an innate drive to find and utilize every scrap of food that they possibly can AND use it extremely efficiently. This comes from their evolving in an extremely arid desert environment. The entire history of the human-donkey relationship is one of their serving us in the most difficult of environments. So, when they are exposed to actual pasture, even if the grass is dormant, they gain weight, sometimes dangerously, with feed on which cattle and horses could not survive. As a result, they really should not be pastured in North America with production animals like cattle and sheep. Livestock management is designed for growth and production. Under this level of calorie and protein intake, donkeys are going to gain weight and it will be hard to get them to a healthy body condition and prevent laminitis. The exception would be animals grazing in the desert southwest. So, if at all possible, don't pasture your donkeys with cattle, especially ones who are eating any grain.

I suppose that Purina Equine Senior does have some sugar in it, as most pellets are held together by molasses. However, if judicitiously fed this should not be a problem. We are feeding in cup quantities, mixed with flax seed, and some vegetables (carrots, chard, and cucumber). Adding corn oil would add digestible calories, and can be an effective way of improving weight gain. If you wanted to do that I would start by adding very small amounts (teaspoon) to a mash containing the above. You might build up to tablespoon over a few weeks. Herbivore digestive tracks can handle fats (lipids in the oil) but their microbiome needs time to acclimate.

I can see that this would be confusing. Thank you for being concerned and addressing this. Really, the best way to approach buying hay is to have it analyzed. Most producers that sell to dairies already do this. I have attached a short article that explains a lot of this and also has some recommendations on the level things like "crude protein" and various measurements of fiber that can be used to differentiate hays. The problem is that hay digestibility is dependent on the way it was grown, how it was harvested, and the stage of growth at which it was harvested. So you might get hay that has both grass and alfalfa in it, that has a similar sugar content than Timothy or other grass hay. I would say that having any alfalfa in the hay is undesirable, not because it is toxic in some way , but because it provides too many digestible calories, regardless of the growth stage. As you will see in this article, it also provides donkeys with more protein than it does for horses. That is because a lot of the "crude protein" in alfalfa is "non-protein nitrogen" which donkeys and ruminants can utilize, and horses cannot. Unless the donkey has a high protein requirement (a nursing jennet or a donkey that is working very hard) excess protein goes into energy metabolism, providing calories. I hope that isn't too confusing, and I can explain in more detail, but it will take a longer post. As mentioned in the article, a good solution is straw, based on a lot of research. I am in California, and barley straw is vary hard to come by. So we use wheat straw which works fine. It is important to differentiate good "bedding straw" from "feed straw". The former is used for bedding stalls, usually at the racetrack, and has long stems and no grain, giving a donkey something to munch while not providing a lot of calories. The latter is used as a cheap source of forage for non-producing cows and has too many digestible nutrients for donkeys. We feed mostly straw with about 1.5% of body weight( that's 3lbs on a 250 lb. small standard donkey) of pasture or orchard grass hay divided into three feedings through the day. Occasionally, one will come along that needs a little more hay, and we separate them out and feed them a little more, monitoring their weight with a weight tape. We do feed a trace mineral supplement, which we mix with a handful of shredded carrots and a tablespoon of Equine Senior make it palatable. This also makes a nice treat for which the donkeys line up in the evening. I hope this is helpful. Basically, you need some straw.

Yes, they aren't thrilled about eating straw until they get used to it. One thing that you can do with the short straw is to thresh it. Basically this involves running it through a screen (I made one out of expanded metal with 1"x1/2" holes). You make a box with the screen on the bottom and scrub the straw on screen, then feed what doesn't go through the screen. This gets any of the grain out of the straw, which is what you are most worried about. It is actually how a grain combine works, but there you want the stuff that goes through. We've used this and have been able to use the shorter stemmed straw without problems.

I also don't know about Canary Grass hay as a feed for donkeys, but would be concerned about potential toxicities as a result of concentration of Selenium and Tryptamine alkaloids in the plants under certain conditions. Canary grass is usually regarded as a weed. Oat or rye straw would provide more digestible calories than barley straw, but , as long as the plant has been combined and the grains removed they could be a solution. The simplest would be to just use wheat straw, which is commonly used as horse or livestock bedding. That is what we feed and makes up most of our donkey's diets. We also feed a trace mineral supplement, which we mix with a handful of shredded carrots and a teaspoon of flax. We do mix pasture grass or teff hay with the straw, but weigh it when feeding donkeys in need of weight loss. A standard donkey gets 1 lb. 4 oz. of hay and about 2 lbs. of wheat straw. With exercise and proper hoof care, donkeys will lose weight on this feed. You are always going to have trouble, as far north as Minnesota, keeping donkeys at an ideal body condition.

This does sound like a complex case, and there may be more than one process involved. It would be helpful to know what the donkeys are eating and their body condition. Donkeys living in areas of higher rainfall, such as the Willamette valley, will be exposed to levels of moisture that their skin and hooves are not adapted to, and, if on pasture, are likely to be overweight. It is not that donkeys can't live there, but it does take extra effort to keep them healthy. The history and pattern of hair loss does suggest several possible causes, which you are absolutely right in wanting to get a complete diagnosis. First, I would be sure that the lice problem has been solved. Damalinia equi, the common louse of donkeys are very small and one needs to carefully comb through the hair on the sides of the neck and in the mane to find them. They can also be resistant to treatment. We have used Neem oil, Ivermectin, Sevin Powder, and Equispot in rotation, as one treatment is not always successful. Second, a bacterium Dermatophilus, can cause crusty skin lesions, which can become itchy. Skin scrapings will pick up mites, which are very rare in donkeys in the USA, but you would need to do a test on the scabs from the scrapings, called a "gram stain" to detect Dermatophilus. A skin biopsy, where not only the surface, but deeper layers, are accessed. This can be looked at after staining and fixing in a histopathology laboratory, and , if taken fresh, can also be cultured to see if bacteria grow. Dermatophilus will respond to antiseptic baths, including vinegar, and also antibiotics like penicillin. Since this seems a long standing and frustrating problem it would be a good idea to invest in a biopsy. The veterinarian should sample several different lesions on an affected animal and not have the skin scrubbed ahead of time. The crusts on the skin may be important to the diagnosis. The little hole left in the skin from a biopsy can be cleaned up after the biopsy is removed. Sometimes this procedure requires a suture to close the hole, sometimes not. Donkeys don't mind it because the veterinarian puts lidocaine in the skin to be biopsied. Another reason to do a biopsy for both histopathology and culture, is that this may be an allergy that is driven by one of a host of things. You mentioned insects, but molds, plant mites (which don't infect the donkey skin) but can be a cause of allergy. A biopsy would show the pathologist if the lesions were primary inflammation, allergy, or the result of a fungus or bacteria. The donkey that has the ventral edema and weakness, could have developed a secondary infection. One possible culprit is Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis, which can get into hairless or ulcerated skin patches, usually on the underside of donkeys and horses. There are other organisms like Actinobacillus that can do the same thing. Identifying the cause is important, but the results will dictate what control measures work best. Finally, I need to point out that donkeys seem to be more prone to skin problems of all kinds, than horses. Because they often start as allergies or something as common as Dermatophilus, they don't get recognized and diagnosed until other bacteria or a more severe inflammatory process takes over, causing ulcerations and hair loss over a large area. This could result if, at sometime in the past, fly bites triggered inflammation, which then became secondarily infected, causing a circular feedback loop of between hypersensitivity and microbes that kept the condition going , even though fly season was over. I would start with very carefully ensuring that there are no lice, and then go to a biopsy, on two or 3 of the donkeys, recognizing that diagnosis and finding a successful treatment may still be a long road. I am glad to consult with you or your veterinarian on this situation. Also, we have a pathologist here at UCD, who specializes in horse, donkey, and mule skin problems, and I would be glad to ask her or send her biopsy samples if that is necessary.

You should absolutely get some wheat straw and use that to give them more to chew on. Further, I am very impressed by your attentiveness to weighing your donkey's diets and assessing their body condition. I SO wish more donkey owners would do this...THANK YOU! Yes, donkeys are just way too efficient for most feed stuffs available in this country. This is especially true in California/Nevada/Arizona area, which has an ideal hay growing climate, and very skilled forage farmers, who produce an excellent product. In much of the world, donkeys live on crop waste, that we would consider trash, and they do a lot of hard work, while retaining an excellent body condition. Straw is the best solution. It is important to examine the straw to be sure there has not been a lot of grain left in it, and that it is 'long stem' and designed for bedding. I say this because we recently had a misunderstanding with the guy that we buy our hay and straw from. The straw he delivered was generally sold for feeding cows, and the stems were short and more digestible than what we wanted. To get around this, we have had to "thresh" the straw to get the small particles and remaining grain out. This does work but it is labor intensive. Using good straw you could cut the hay intake in half, depending on your donkey's individual metabolism. Summary: you are on the right track and I wish you good luck with your donkeys.

This is certainly a serious situation. My initial impression is that he may be hyperlipemic, a condition that is common in miniature donkeys. While they apparently did a complete blood count (CBC) on him at the veterinary hospital, it would be more important to know his liver enzyme values and the triglyceride level in his blood. Chemistry panels made for horses often do not test for triglycerides, which are very important in donkeys. I do not know what part of the country you are in or anything about his diet previous to getting sick. Is there a problem with selenium deficiency in the area? The veterinarian or county agricultural office should know this. I am sorry to not be more help.

Thank you for your detailed description of your donkey's diet. That is really helpful. I would not worry about the oats that much, as that is a pretty small quantity. However, Triticale, which is a hybrid of wheat and rye may be adding a significant amount of calories to his diet, depending on how much grain is in the hay. If he has gained some weight, but just has some ribs showing, I would back off on his caloric intake a bit. Maybe just Bermuda or other non-grain grass hay, and rely on the alfalfa/grass pellets to proved adequate protein for development. I would keep an eye on his joints, because mammoths can have problems with bone formation if they are well fed and grow too fast, with some becoming quite lame. If you see anything that looks like joint swelling or soreness, having his knees or other joints that appear enlarged radiographed (x-rayed) would be a good idea.

You do need to be a little careful with donkeys, especially minis on any kind of pasture. If it is improved and irrigated, most pastures tend to be too high in soluble carbohydrates (sugars and starches) for donkeys. They tend to get fat rapidly, and even founder. This could be causing the diarrhea along with the increased water intake that results from pasture consumption. Additionally, spring exposure to pasture will cause encysted cyathostomes (common intestinal worm called "small stongyles") to break out of the cysts in the gut mucosa, where they have been living over the winter. This can also cause diarrhea. So it may be worthwhile considering your parasite control, measures and having a fecal egg count done. Actually, donkeys do better on pastures that are either dry and not growing, or contain low digestible energy grasses. We would also recommend that minis be provided with straw (not hay) while they are on pasture, to give them something "low calorie" to fill up on, and prevent over consumption of the excessively nutritions pasture plants

There are a number of things that I would look at in an older, lethargic donkey. First, I would repeat the blood count, as those are just a snapshot of the cell types and numbers present in the moment the sample was taken. If he has a "toxic line" his neutrophil count could be going down, which happens with endotoxemia. How elevated are the lymphoctyes? That could mean several things, depending on the actual levels. Then, were clinical chemistries measured? Knowing the blood protein, fibrinogen, triglyceride, and serum enzyme levels would be really important. In an older donkey I would definitely want to know the condition of his teeth. While parasites are less likely, doing a fecal for worm ova would be a good idea, especially if he is anemic. To get him more nutrition, you might consider feeding him Equine Senior pellets made into a soften mash by mixing with warm water and adding some shredded carrots.

We have not fed rice straw to donkeys and most places in the world where rice is grown is not good donkey habitat. So there is not a lot of experience using rice straw as donkey roughage. However, the stem and leaves of the rice plant is very high in undigestible silica. The small amount of literature that I could find on rice straw for donkeys, says that they can eat it, if they are given other hay to increase the nutritive value of the whole diet. Also, rice straw, being extremely course and hard, would be less appetizing even for donkeys with good teeth. If provided to give the donkeys something to do it is probably okay. On the other hand, if it is a major part of the diet, there may be problems with malnutrition or intestinal impactions, because of rice straw's low digestibility.

Some mammoths can be pretty "angular" which means their pelvic bones appear prominent, with less subcutaneous fat over the rump. Some appearance of ribs may also be normal. However, if she is not eating well and looks really thing, there are some things that should be looked at. I would start with her teeth. They should be thoroughly examined by a veterinarian or equine dentist with experience with donkeys. It would also be worthwhile to do a blood chemistry panel and complete blood cell count to ensure that there is no evidence of kidney or liver problems, or a possible chronic infection. If all this is normal, she may just need a slightly higher calorie and tastier diet. Assuming the hay is of good quality, adding a supplement feed would cause her to gain weight. We have used Purina Equine Senior at half the amount recommended for a horse of the same size. Adding some shredded carrots will also make it tastier. Finally, I would get a weight tape and check the weight gain every couple of weeks. The important thing is to not go "overboard" and cause your donkey to become too fat.

Parts of oak trees, primarily the buds that grow from acorns, can be toxic to herbivores of all species. They contain tannins, which if eaten in large quantity, can damage the kidneys. The green husks of acorns have also been reported to be toxic. However, the general recommendation is to not remove oak trees from pastures, but to trim the branches above the level that donkeys or horses can reach. Also, if acorns do sprout the buds should be weeded out of the pasture, if there is nothing else for the animals to eat. They generally do not like the taste of oak leaves, if there is alternative forage. The is one additional concern with donkeys: since acorns are basically seeds they are high in starches and other soluble carbohydrates, just like any grain. Since donkeys do not tolerate high digestible calorie diets well, excessive consumption of acorns could lead to obesity and laminitis. So having an oak tree in the pasture is not a huge problem, given that you make some allowances for the above, such as removing oak buds when they sprout, trimming low branches, and raking up the acorns in really heavy acorn production years. Oaks do respond to changes in temperature and moisture by producing more or less acorns every year.

It is most likely that the red that you are seeing is blood, as there is not another red discharge that a donkey might have. Also, with an intact male present the blood is probably coming from trauma to the vagina or vulva, which could be the result of breeding or bighting. Donkeys do not menstruate like humans or dogs, during the estrus cycle. If the jenny is otherwise doing okay, the trauma should heal without treatment. However, very occasionally, a serious vaginal or rectal tear can occur during breeding, and this situation points up two things that you need to address pretty much immediately. The jenny needs to get some training so that she can be caught, led, groomed, tied, and have her hooves trimmed. Otherwise, when you do have a more serious health situation, you will not be able to examine her and a veterinarian will not be able to treat her. Since she will likely live to 30 years old (some donkeys live to 40 or more) it is likely that this will be required at some point. This is crucial to your jenny's well being and an obligation that any owner takes on when the life and welfare of an animal is placed in their hands. Then, that jack (intact male) needs to be castrated. Otherwise, this will continue to happen and you will end up dealing with a jenny who is pregnant and all the complications that go along with that. In our society, intact males end up having a poor quality of life and contribute to the already major overpopulation of unwanted donkeys in the USA.
I guess the good news is that the wildest of donkeys are easy to gentle and train, given a plan and patience, and gelding jacks is a procedure that we do hundreds of times a year with minimal complications. Please start on this right away !

we use Purina Equine Senior diet, with hay and, yes, carrots for older underweight donkeys. I know you said he has good teeth but at 32 years old his premolars and molars must be very short (sometime called "expired"). This is going to decrease his ability to chew roughage, so going to a pelleted feed, where the particles in the feed are really small. It is a good idea to soak the pellets into a mash with hot water, to make it still easier to digest and avoid pellets getting impacted in her esophagus. A 30 some year old jennet that we have now, who weighs about 300 lbs, gets one coup of the Senior three times a day mixed, mixed with a tablespoon of Psyllium to lubricate her bowl. I don't know how big your jack is but this may give you some idea. However, even very old donkeys rarely lose weight severely unless they are starved, have expired teeth, or have some other health problem. In addition to the suggestions above, I would suggest doing some blood work on your jack to ensure there aren't other problems. A Complete Blood Count (CBC), Fibrinogen, and a "Chemistry Panel" including Triglyceride measurement. I would also repeat the parasite test, because the number of parasite eggs (ova) that a donkey will shed (and can be seen on the test) depends on the time of year. A negative fecal flotation on a single animal may or may not mean that there are no worms. Retesting, especially as the climate turns to spring, is a good idea. I am also assuming that this older jack has no joint, back, or jaw problems. Those could make it hard for him to get around and eat.

I am sorry for your loss and you are absolutely right, in that, donkeys grieve when they lose a friend. The poop eating is not necessarily a health problem, if your donkeys are on an adequate parasite control program. Donkeys are somewhat more susceptible to Parascaris equorum, a type of equine parasitic worm, than are horses. However, this organism is easily treated by virtually all available de-wormers. The best thing would be for her to develop a "buddy" relationship with another of your donkeys, which may happen in time. Unfortunately, there is no way to make it happen or predict. Another option would be to introduce another donkey of the same size and age to the herd, in hopes that they "pal up". In any event, don't worry about the poop eating (coprophagy). Donkeys will do that but it should not hurt her.

Obese donkeys should not be on grass, grazing muzzle or no. The problem is that in some studies done by Dr. Elizabeth Tadros, that were presented at the Donkey Welfare Symposium a couple of years ago, she demonstrated that donkeys quickly learn to get more and more food through the muzzle. Minis particularly are just have such minimal energy requirements that they will stay obese if they can get to any pasture at all. Unfortunately, you will need to go to a dry lot situation, with frequent feedings of small amounts of hay to make any progress. You will also have to make sure that there is a vitamin/mineral supplement, because your donkey will need those, even if it is eating less. Here is a good basic discussion of feeding an obese donkey for weight loss: https://www.thedonkeysanctuary.org.uk/sites/uk/files/2019-02/feeding-&-managing-the-overweight-donkey.pdf
FACTSHEET: Owners FACTSHEET Carin o h lde onkey FEEDING & MANAGING THE OVERWEIGHT DONKEY MANAGING WEIGHT LOSS
FACTSHEET Carin o h lde onkey FACTSHEET: Owners FEEDING & MANAGING THE OVERWEIGHT DONKEY Weight loss should be gradual and is achieved by choosing appropriate feeds that are low in energy
www.thedonkeysanctuary.org.uk
This is written in the UK, where it rains all the time and grass is everywhere, and is designed with standard donkeys in mind. One has to be that much more careful with minis. It is a good idea to get a scale and actually weigh the amount that you are feeding. Don't go below 1.75% of body weight (your veterinarian can help you estimate your donkeys weight. If the feet have been attended to, exercise can also help. Go walking or hiking with your donkey at least several times a week. This does sound like a lot of work, but both you and your mini will be happier and healthier for it.

There are a lot of reasons why donkeys may have soft feces. While parasites are not impossible, they are an unlikely cause of wet stool unless they are really severe. If you are going to test for parasites, be sure and test all the donkeys, as if you have a parasite problem different donkeys can shed parasite ova at different rates. Other possible causes would include sand in their colon (your veterinarian can diagnose this by listening to the bowel with a stethoscope), chewing on leaves or bark in the pasture, or their estrus cycles if they are jennets. Some donkeys just get intermittent soft feces or "cow poop", for no apparent reason and are perfectly healthy.
On the overweight donkeys: feed a handful of alfalfa (literally) twice a day for a week, then once a day for another week, and that should be fine. Do make sure that their teeth are in good shape and the continue to eat the straw and Bermuda. Where you get into trouble is if they are really fat and stop eating, which can lead to hyperlipemia. It might be a good idea to do some blood work on them, with a clinical chemistry that includes a test for Triglycerides, which could warn you ahead of time if hyperlipemia is starting.

I am glad you have your donkey on a diet. It is really hard to keep donkeys trim and healthy given the hays that are available in this country. It will be difficult to get rid of the neck crest once it has formed, as that is a prime place for donkeys to store energy. However, getting an exercise program going will do the most to reduce its size. Hiking, jogging, or teaching your donkey how to pull a cart are all things that will not only help with the fat deposition, but make you and your donkey happier.

I would stay away from "calming aids" because: 1) they don't work and it is a waste of time and money and 2) if you go to actual sedatives like benzodiazepines, their long term side effects can be a concern. What I would do would be to do one or several of the following: build a larger, coyote proof pen, where they can be outside and look around but still with protection; adopt a larger neutered jack to put in with the older jenny and the foal, as coyotes would be very unlikely to approach such a "herd"; provide some environmental enrichment such as: hay stuffed balls (use grass hay or straw...NOT alfalfa), plastic or rubber toys, climbable hills or obstacles...all to keep them amused. You are quite right to recognize that donkeys are NOT horses. They will get obese in a fraction of what a horse of the same size would require for sustenance. Keep it to grass hays with slow non-structural carbohydrates and dilute that with straw (the same stuff they use for horse bedding) to decrease the caloric density and give them something to chew on. The foal should be getting some additional protein supplement, as he is growing. You will need to separate him from the jennet while he consumes this. Actually this is a good opportunity to do some training and socialization. Also, it is a really good idea to take both of them on walks or some other kind of controlled exercise. It will allow them to eat more, be healthier, and "see the country" which donkeys seem to enjoy.

Donkeys store fat above the nuchal ligament in the crest of their necks. That is the most likely cause of a swollen crest. If this is the case that donkey needs to eat less calories and get more exercise because it is getting obese. Once serious excess fat deposits set in, they are very hard to get rid of. Donkeys do fine on straw (just plain old wheat or barley straw) and a little grass hay , with maybe a mineral supplement. No alfalfa, no pellets, no grain! Also, since donkeys are individuals, just like people, one donkey in a herd will tend to accumulate more fat than another. However, both could benefit from a bit of dieting.

Mineral deficiencies are actually quite rare in any herbivores fed a decent quality roughage, except in some specific parts of the country where some trace elements have been leached from the soil by geography or irrigation. However, many owners (including us) do supplement, just in case. California Trace is a good, balanced mineral supplement that could be useful in practically all environments. We also use Himalayan salt licks. I used to thing they were kind of a "Yuppie Fad", but I have to admit that the donkeys really like them and they are pretty good at seeking out what they need. There is a lot of controversy on "loose" vs. "block". However, there is no research that proves one is better than the other and, given that deficiencies are pretty minor, it is very unlikely that it makes a difference. I would make sure the if these donkeys don't look good you also have several fecal analyses done for parasites, which are more likely to cause poor condition than mineral deficiencies. The problem with alfalfa hay is that it has way too many digestible calories for the donkey's hyper efficient digestive system. It would be like a human with a very efficient metabolism eating 10 hamburgers a day and not doing a great deal of physical labor. I hope your donkeys are not already obese. You can cut back on the alfalfa pretty rapidly as long as they are also getting a little grass hay. Two week transition is more than enough. We feed wheat straw and small amounts of grass hay, and our donkeys generally look great (except for a couple of food obsessed mini's who also require more exercise to not be too fat).

The biggest problem with donkeys on any kind of pasture is that they tend to get fat. Their ancestors evolved to thrive in places like the Horn of Africa, and wild ones are overpopulating Death Valley (a truly extreme environment). So I would not worry about feed deficiency and you should look out to make sure that the minis are not getting obese. Having a trace element salt lick might be a good idea. Of course, this all depends on the amount and type of pasture plants (grass vs clover) and what part of the country.

The small amount of sugar in syrup or apple sauce is not going to harm the effects of Remission, which is a microbial culture with trace elements and amino acids. If your veterinarian has found this product useful for laminitis that's fine, but it is difficult to see how it will have any effect on insulin resistance. Those Sacromyces bacteria, that survive the gastric acid and make it to the colon, will digest any sugars in the syrup or apple sauce. This is a difficult and complex problem that you are dealing with, but Remission appears safe as would small amounts of sugars that would improve the acceptability.

Donkeys have evolved to store any tiny amount of energy that they possibly can. They build up fat in their abdomen (where you can't see it), in their scrotum (in the case of jacks), and on the crest of their necks (which is what causes the collapsed crest). Basically, this donkey, either now or at some time in the past, has been eating too many calories and has built up adipose tissue (fat) around the nucheal ligament (in the crest of the neck). These calories could have come from grass (green or dry), hay, grain, or excessive treats. You have to remember that donkeys THRIVE in Death Valley, one of the sparsest and most extreme environments on the planet. A carrot and an apple by themselves would not be enough to cause the problem, but a generally high level of energy intake would.

If your donkey is already obese getting her to a normal weight is going to be difficult, just as is the case with humans. Besides diet restrictions, you need to look at exercise as part of your plan. This could be done by going on walks, running with your donkey, or teaching her to drive or pull logs. The trouble with giving any exposure to pasture is that this donkey can graze enough to gain weight in 45 minutes, much less being on pasture all night. Instead of a stall, your donkey would do better in a large dry lot (no grass), where it could be housed with a couple of its friends. Using portable panels, you can arrange it so that several donkeys can be fed individually at meal time. The obese donkey should be on a straw diet, supplemented with trace minerals and literally handfuls of hay. Feed at least 3 times a day, but just small quantities. The slimmer donkeys can eat separately, but in the same general paddock, where they can see each other, and then all the donkeys can be together in between meals. You can graze your pasture down with sheep or goats to get the grass short or non-existent, which will be better for all the donkeys. I do not know what part of the country you are in, but in the more humid northern, eastern, or south eastern states pastures are just too rich for donkeys. These animals have evolved to live in very arid and sparse conditions.

I would not worry about your donkey's wanting to chew on hair. I realize that it looks gross, but donkeys will chew on all sorts of stuff, and what we may consider dirty or bad, they may find interesting. If hew was missing anything in his diet, it might just be dry roughage, like dry hay or , better, straw. If most of his diet is grass and it tends to be green and wet he may crave some plain old course roughage, and it would be good for him. White line disease is more of a concern. Donkeys hooves just do not adapt to wet and humid conditions well. Anywhere east of the Mississippi or north of the Great Basin, they will have trouble. While we don't have to deal with that sort of rain and humidity in California, when it does rain here (which may never happen again.....) the clay soil mud can be very bad for horse and donkey hooves. To avoid this we use coarse wood chips, which are larger than bedding shavings, and dump them in the donkey yard to 4 inches deep. This keeps their hooves out of the mud and dry, and the chips contain tannins which further help prevent thrush and WLD. The best treatment for WLD is scrupulous trimming to remove any hoof wall where the white line separations are occurring. As long as the removed wall is not more than 1/3 the normal circumference of the hoof, they have plenty of weight bearing horn to walk on. The pockets need to be trimmed all the way back to where the white line is normal, and watched closely as the hoof wall goes back to avoid separations from developing again. A variety of medications can be used to treat the WLD areas and should be used, but unless the pockets are completely trimmed out you will not have much success in treating it.

Carrots or chard would be fine. They are tasty and may encourage eating. However, if it has been a week, it may be a good idea for your veterinarian to do a blood test called a CBC (Complete Blood Count) including testing for fibrinogen. If your jenny is getting "bute" or Banamine, she may have an infection but still not have a fever. A blood test called "clinical chemistry" , including triglycerides, would also be a good idea. She may have had a difficult birth but after 8 days she should be feeling better. Donkey specific normals for these tests are available at the Donkey Sanctuary website.

My suggestion would be to keep them on Prescend and monitor their diet. If you are feeding Coastal hay, my suggestion to not over feed carbohydrates especially water soluble (also called nonstructural carbohydrates) you can soak the hay and wash away part of the nonstructural or WS CHOs. If you use warm water you can wash away a larger amount that will help with sugar intake which should be low for donkeys with Cushing. You can also place the hay in slow feeders and or provide enrichment tools like hay balls and that will help keep the donkeys some what occupied and foraging for a longer period of time. The medication (Prescend) is necessary for helping regulate hormones associated with Cushings or phases of Equine Metabolic Syndrome especially PPID (pituitary pars intermediate dysfunction so removing the donkeys from this medication could be very detrimental to the donkeys health so I would highly suggest consulting with your attending veterinarian. As far as handing them off to PVDR that’s a question for for PVDR but would require them to then provide such care.

I believe that your donkey has "sarcoids" which are very different from "sarcomas". Sarcoids are tumors that are extremely common in donkeys and mules, and can be locally invasive (that is they can enlarge or spread in their immediate area), but they are not considered "malignant" (can spread around the body to many organs). Sarcomas are VERY rare, but if they do occur they are more difficult to treat. If there is any question the tumors should be biopsied, so you know exactly what you are dealing with. If these are sarcoids (by far the most likely situation) the only treatments that have been objectively proven to cure them is wide excision (which means surgical removal including at least 1 cm of normal looking skin around the tumor's base) and local injection of a chemotherapy drug called Cisplatin. Most surgeons use both at the same time and the Cisplatin can be either injected into the tumor area or placed as time release absorbable "beads". The chemo therapy is only local and does not have the side effects systemically that we normally think of with "chemo", but it often has to be repeated several times. If the sarcoid next to the eye will not allow wide excision, it could be just injected with Cisplatin. There is also another, less expensive, chemo agent, called 5 - fluorouracil (5-FU) which I have used successfully by local injection. This does require repeated injections, usually at weekly intervals. The dosages and protocols for these treatments are all available to your veterinarian in scientific publications. Various therapies that basically destroy tissue, such as cautery, cryosurgery (liquid nitrogen), or various caustic agents such as blood root extract (Xterra) will destroy sarcoid tissue, though they are less efficacious. However, these may be difficult to use close to the eye. We have had success with a technique in which a sarcoid is surgically removed, sliced, and the pieces frozen in liquid nitrogen for 10 minutes (to kill the cells and the virus that causes the tumor) and then implanted under the skin to stimulate the immune system to attack remaining sarcoid tissue in the body. It was described by a surgeon at UPenn's New Bolton Center and we have used it in Mexico and Nicaragua, where there were no chemo options, and the horses, donkeys, or mules had so many sarcoids that they could not be removed surgically (dozens sometime).

It is very hard to maintain proper weight on donkeys that are not living in the dry west and south west, with short annual grasses for forage. Besides looking at your jenny's abdomen , look at the crest of her neck and the fat pads to the side of her tail. These areas are good places to estimate actual fat accumulation. Sometimes abdominal "wideness" in a non-pregnant animal can be the result of aging. Donkeys get "saggy" as they age. However, you are quite right: muzzling the jennet or changing to a dry pasture or paddock will be necessary to prevent weight gain if there is enough spring grass. Something else to consider is the amount of exercise. Hiking, jogging, or working with your donkey can help.

While it is normal for older donkeys to lose muscle mass (boney and thin over legs and top line) and get a larger abdomen, there are some potential health problems that should be ruled out. Particularly in and older donkey teeth can be an issue, decreasing the ability of the donkey to convert feed energy and protein into body mass. So a good dental exam and treatment , if necessary, would be a good place to start. Also, donkeys seem to remain sensitive to internal parasites even in old age. Analyzing the feces for worm eggs should also be done and management changed if parasites are found. Finally, as donkeys age they can get endocrine problems similar to pituitary adenomas and Metabolic Syndrome in horses. There are blood tests that your veterinarian can do to identify these and treatments available. All of these conditions can re insidious and only make an animal look ill when they are quite advanced. So invetigating these possibilities now is a good idea.

If you are feeding alfalfa pellets, you are probably providing enough calcium and protein for lactation. You could supplement with a high quality protein like Calf Manna and a trace mineral with fat soluble vitamins (particularly vitamin E). I depends a bit on the quality of hay used to make the pellets. However, be careful to not feed excessive digestible energy (more than the recommended amount of alfalfa or any molasses) as it will tend to make the jennet obese.

I am not at PVDR, but to answer your question, generally, I would need to know if the weight problem is weight gain or weight loss. Donkeys, including mini's, are metabolically different than horses, with the tendency to become overweight very easily. This is because of various physical and behavioral adaptations that have stuck with donkeys from the time that they adapted to the very harsh environment of eastern Africa. Among these are a very effective chewing ability to grind even the coarsest feed into digestible particles, an extended gut transit time, a greater percentage of their body being digestive organs, and a metabolic condition referred to as "insulin resistance", which tends to make them store every morsel of energy that they consume. It is entirely possible that a miniature donkey, who is not getting a lot of exercise or not 'working' could gain a lot of weight on good quality coastal Bermuda grass, with no supplements added. We have found it hard to keep donkeys fit (BCS of 3 on a 1-5 scale, or between 4 and 6 on the 1-9 Hennecke scale) without feeding at least part of the diet as straw. Barley straw is preferred, but wheat straw (with NO grain in it) works and is often the only option available. Donkeys are individuals and the amount of hay vs. straw will vary depending on the donkey's feeding behavior and individual metabolism. We occasionally feed supplements to older donkeys or other who, for some reason, don't maintain healthy body weight on hay. What has worked the best is Equine Senior, fed at 1/3 the horse dose and softened with warm water for those with bad teeth. I would doubt that this would be necessary in a mini.

I would replace the small amount of grain with lettuce and carrot for a little extra treat. The grain may be low fat but there is a lot of soluble carbohydrate in all grains and donkeys just don't need that, unless they are being rehabilitated. There really are no supplements that will reduce the "pones " or fat deposits. The best approach is to decrease caloric intake and increase exercise. Walking/hiking is as good for donkeys as it is for humans. However, I would also like to point out that donkeys are the world champs at storing energy as fat. Even donkeys that are trim will retain fat deposits on their necks and rump, once they have developed. As far as the hoof issue: donkeys will develop a thickened layer of hoof wall at the toes that can separate and appear as an extra layer. The reason for this is unclear. There is virtually no research on it and, even experienced farriers, have various theories and approaches to treating it. My observation is that when this layer is rasped off and the hooves are carefully and regularly trimmed they can become normal. Some would recommend a trace mineral supplement like California Trace to improve hoof health and formation. There is no objective proof that these work but we are using CT on our donkeys.

One thing to consider when grazing your donkey is the time of day when you are allowing her to graze. You can reduce the amount of nonstructural carbohydrates (also referred to as water soluble carbohydrates) if you allow her to graze early in the morning until roughly 11 am. During the night plants are dormant and use their energy stores (sugars and starches). An overload of sugar or starch (NSC or water soluble carbohydrates) we believe can lead to inflammation in the laminae of the hoof. So, consider grazing time as one way to reduce her pasture intake. Any changes you make in her diet should ideally be done slowly over a period of time. You can also consider offering her slow feeder for hay if you are supplementing her diet with hay when she’s not on pasture. Another way to reduce NSC intake is by soaking your hay for at least 30 mins or up to 1 hour if using cold water, if hot you can go with 30 mins, then remove hay from the water and offer to your donkey. There’s a lot of wonderful enrichment feeders available as well. I know PVDR uses them for some of the mules. This will limit intake and also provide engagement for your donkey. Again, consider her diet and then making changes slowly to reduce sugar intake and allowing for time for adjustments. Another option is fencing off part of your pasture and making smaller lots for her to graze for the limited time. You can easily do this with a hot wire fence. I hope this helps but also consider working with your veterinarian on developing a diet, weigh her and take before and after photos of each side to monitor body condition scores.

As a rule giving a couple of days for adaptation to a feed change is a good idea. Something like mixing the wheat and barley straw half and half for 4-5 days before making a complete transition. However, if you needed to make the transition right away, this would be absolutely safe. The difference in straw is not that significant.

Assuming the pregnant jennet is otherwise healthy and has good teeth, a lot of special feed is not really necessary. Good quality grass hay (alfalfa is not necessary and can make donkeys excessively fat pretty quickly), a trace element supplement (we use California Trace, though there are lots of others), and maybe a highly digestible pellet, to add some protein, would be sufficient. An example would be Equine Senior, at half the horse dose. Again, a lot of starches and sugars (grain and molasses) is just going to make the jennet fat, and maybe cause laminitis. They just don't need that.

By far the simplest thing would be to feed both the donkey and the horse grass hay. While alfalfa is often fed to horses, it is too high in digestible energy and protein for most horses, unless they are young and growing, lactating, or in heavy work. If your horse needs some protein supplementation (the reason alfalfa is usually fed) a small amount of cubes or pellets in a bucket, away from the donkey would be a solution. Using a hay net will not keep the donkey from eating the alfalfa leaves that fall on the ground and, unless you hang it high enough that it will make the horses neck uncomfortable while eating, will not keep the donkey from reaching the alfalfa. I realize that quality, well cured grass hay may be hard to find in certain parts of the country, but investing in good, low soluble carbohydrate roughage would benefit both horse and donkey.

We have the best luck with feeding Purina Equine Senior at 1/2 the horse dose for weight and condition gain in donkeys. You might give the foal a little protein supplement, like Calf Manna. I would also have the manure tested for parasites and don't forget to comb the hair looking for lice. These sale yards are great places for parasite and disease transmission. I would also start their vaccinations: Tetanus, encephalitis, and equine influenza as soon as you can. We have been hearing about outbreaks of equine influenza in donkeys with a history of being rescued from kill yards. This disease causes an annoying cough in horses, but can cause severe respiratory disease, which can be fatal, in donkeys.

This is a serious situation that requires veterinary assistance. Without knowing things like how old the donkey is, previous diseases, diet, and vaccinations it is hard to make a diagnosis. I can direct you on how to make a sling to help your donkey stand if you email me, but that will only help temporarily without veterinary treatment.

This is both a taste and a behavior issue, with which many owners struggle. We can definitely relate....The approach that Cindy takes has been the most successful by far: Mix apple sauce and dark molasses 50:50 (like 2 oz of each), stir well or blender, then start by rubbing a little of the mixture on donkey's lips or gums with your finger, until they get the idea that it is yummy. Then get a catheter trip 35 or 60 ml syringe and put the some of the mix on the outside and use that to put solution on lips. You may have to get the donkey used to your holding something plastic in your hand, which can be done by holding the syringe while you are feeding and grooming. Start rubbing it on the neck and face, until they are not afraid. Always be careful to not jab thier gums or lips with then end of the syringe. This can be done by keeping the tip parallel to the gums and sliding it in after parting lips with your finger. Eventually you can start giving a few milliliters of the solution (like 5 or 10 ) into the donkey's mouth. You can also hold the syringe tip next to a piece of carrot, if that is the reward that they are used to, until they start associating the syringe with goodness. Only after they are really good about taking the syringe and solution do we mix the medication with the apple sauce/molasses. I don't know how much volume in involved in the Pergolide powder because I don't know the size of your donkey, but you can probably disguise it in 20 mls or so. We have used this with a variety of medications: NSAID's, antibiotics, and dewormer and it inevitably works well. It does take sometimes two weeks to get donkey trained, doing the training once a day or every other day. When it comes time to worm our donkeys, Cindy just goes out with syringes, they all line up without halters or any restraint and literally suck the medication out of the syringe. I know feeding medications is more convenient, but the accuracy of dosing is MUCH lower and generally recommend giving oral medications directly by syringe as part of daily feeding or grooming. Otherwise you really never know if you are getting the correct amount administered.

If the muscle loss in the hips is a result of nerve injury, feed will be unlikely to bring it back. Another issue in an old donkey like that is the condition of her teeth. At that stage of life they are often "expired" (no crown above the gum line). If that is the case she will need to eat processed feed like Equine Senior, which we have found will maintain weight in an older donkey, safely. Soaking the pellets in warm water and adding psyllium to it, makes the diet easier to eat and digest (no chewing required) and will lubricate the bowel to help prevent impaction from coarse roughage. You will still need to feed hay to give her something to do.

If this is actually sweet itch, the most important thing is to separate the donkey from the insects that are causing this hypersensitivity. This may mean putting a sheet or leggings on him depending on where the lesions are. In extreme cases putting the animal in a screened stall when insects are active may be necessary. Veterinarian can prescribe anti-inflammatory medications that can be given orally (antihistamines or prednisolone). We have had some luck in feeding flax seed to a mini with seasonal hypersensitivity. You do have to be careful to not feed too much as this supplement also contains a lot of calories. Donkeys can be trained to accept the administration of topical medications by associating them with carrot treats.

Yes, but in very little moderation. If you can get a mineral lick instead of loose minerals, that would be better for the donkey so they don't over do it.

Judging if a donkey is getting overly fat is difficult. Donkeys will often get an increase in their crest before fat is deposited anywhere else. I applaud your diligence in worrying about this, as many people don't until is has already become a problem. I would suggest a few things:
There is nothing wrong with substituting wheat straw for barley straw. Our donkeys main diet is wheat straw and they do fine. The get a very small amount of grass hay, and a evening carrot/chard/cucumber salad (okay...that's a little off the wall but they really like it). However, the hay and salad are literally handfuls, with most calories coming from the straw. This includes two mini's who are doing fine.
Increase exercise: which is good for everybody. If you donkeys do not have a large paddock to roam in, start hiking/running with them, depending on your own exercise regimen. Consider teaching your mini how to pull a cart, snig (drag logs through a course), or do obstacles. Using up some of that excess energy will help.
While there is little toxicity associated with thyroid supplementation, this should ONLY be considered as a VERY last resort. Thyroid hormones have multiple metabolic effects and you don't want to cause a problem in trying to solve something that can be addressed other ways.

One thing that comes to my mind, especially given his age would be Cushings. Cushings can cause muscle wasting (and therefore weight loss). Your veterinarian should be able to assist with making this diagnosis. A baseline ACTH level (from a blood sample) is one way to possibly make this diagnosis, but it can be difficult to interpret, especially this time of year. The other method is called a TRH response test (also run on blood, following an intravenous injection). Feel free to have your veterinarian contact me directly if he/she would like any further diagnostic guidance.

Great suggestion! I would also suggest checking his teeth and considering a dental exam. This could discourage the little guy from wanting to eat a dental disorder and cause him to loose weight. Other thoughts would be to do a fecal egg count and look at how often you are feeding, you may need to increase his diet and offer several small meals a day of his equine senior to meet his caloric needs but test for Cushing's' first because Equine Senior contains molasses and if he has Cushing's then you would need to consider a diet with less sugar- specifically nonstructural carbohydrate sugar and with Bermuda hay "if" he has Cushing's you can soak the hay in warm water to decrease NSC also known as water-soluble carbohydrates.

That is odd that the jennet voluntarily weaned her foal at 3 months. Was she in poor physical condition?
At 3 months of age the following are important:
He needs a higher protein intake because he is rapidly growing and developing. This would normally be provided by mother's milk but if there is no nursing, a milk based supplement is the next best thing. Land O Lakes, Purina, and several other companies make milk replacer pellets. The amount fed depends on which product is available to you , but they all have directions on the bag. Grain, by itself, is too low in protein and calcium to provide adequate nutrition. If he has not eaten a pelleted feed before it might take some time for him to get used to the supplement, but that's what he needs. The rest of the diet should consist of good quality forage (hay). Normally we would not recommend feeding alfalfa to donkeys but if half of his hay ration was alfalfa that would raise the protein and calcium intake too. The supplement should also contain fat soluble vitamins (E and A) as well as trace elements (Selenium, copper, Zinc).
Deworming is likely going to be important. It is always best to have a fecal analysis run as a base line to see if your worming program is working. If the foal is in poor condition or if the previous worming history is unknown, start by giving 1/2 dose of wormer every three days for 4 treatments. This will decrease the likelihood of killing too many of the large Parascaris equorum parasites too fast. Donkeys are sensitive to these and they are large enough to cause intestinal blockage if the foal is heavily infected and you kill them too fast. Ivermetin, Pyrantel Pamoate, or Fenbendazole are all appropriate. Again, doing a fecal analysis before and a week after worming would be ideal as it will identify the effectiveness of the treatment. There are problems with resistant parasites, but they only way to test that is to use a wormer and then check.
For psychologic development this foal needs a donkey "friend". An older gelding is often used for this purpose. Orphaned or early weaned foals who do not get this exposure and are just raised by humans never "learn to be a donkey". This gets expressed in undesirable behaviors as the animal gets older and can make them very difficult to socialize and train for interactions with humans.

Depending on the diet jennets can lose weight after foaling. She should certainly get a couple of years off, if for no better reason than that there are a great many donkeys in this country without homes and we try to discourage the production of more. He diet should still be primarily good quality hay and straw, but you might supplement her with a small amount of a highly digestible processed feed like Equine Senior. Some feel that adding California Trace mineral supplement will help with her feet. Jennets who have had multiple pregnancies will often have prominent hip bones (actually part of the pelvis).

I would agree with this feeding plan 100%. You can substitute wheat straw for barley straw, as it is easier to find in many parts of the USA. Of course, never feed wheat or barley HAY, as that contains the grain heads too and would be way to high calorie for donkeys. Beyond a proper diet, you also need to make sure that your donkey has environmental enrichment, which can take all sorts of forms, including going for hikes with your donkey . You should also work with picking up your donkeys hooves regularly, so that they can be handled by the farrier. In most situations in the USA, donkeys need to have their hooves trimmed about every two months. It is also important that donkeys hooves remain as dry as possible. They do not take moisture well, as they are adapted to arid conditions.

EMS and Equine Cushing's have many similar effects: laminitis, obesity, abnormal fat patterns. In fact EMS is sometimes referred to as "Peripheral Cushing's". As with many donkey related issues there has been relatively little research in metabolic disease and much of the testing and treatment recommendations are extrapolated from horses. Assuming that the test your veterinarian did was for pituitary hormones, it does sound like your donkey may be positive for Cushing's. In any event the management of the two conditions is similar. Have your hay tested for soluble or non-structural carbohydrates and try to find the lowest hay that you can. Putting straw (barley straw is best but you can use wheat straw) in a hay net for the donkey to chew on through the day gives them something to do, fills them up, and won't contribute to increased obesity. You may have to supplement with trace minerals and that can be done by top dressing a "salad" of vegetables like carrots, chard, or cucumbers (we grow Armenian cucumbers for our donkeys because of their high production). These are high fiber and high moisture so feeding a small amount everyday for supplementation won't cause weight gain. While any medication can have side effects, reported ones for pergolide, the treatment for Cushing's, has few complications that I know of, except that there is a fair amount of expense involved. X-rays of her hooves would be a good idea to look for evidence of laminitis and also to serve as a baseline if she was to show more lameness in the future. On the 4 year old: that is a significant titer (blood level) for EPM. However, there could be other things causing the stumbling in a large, young mammoth. Before I chalked it up to EPM, it would be necessary to do a thorough neurologic and lameness exam. Mammoths are prone to bone growth abnormalities referred to as "OCD". These can effect joints, but also the spinal chord, which would look very much like EPM.
Because he is young and because stumbling is a potential safety hazard for you it would be a good idea to consider taking him to an equine referral center and investing the money in x-rays and sampling CSF fluid (which is the definitive way of checking for EPM) . There are equine referral hospitals in both Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Treatment for EPM, especially in a mildly effected animal, is pretty successful and well tolerated. Your veterinarian could prescribe appropriate medications (Ponazuril or SulfaTrimethoprim) and you could look for improvement. However, having a more accurate diagnosis would avoid potentially wasting time trying to treat the wrong condition. We really do need more research in these conditions in donkeys.

Chronic colic can be difficult to sort out and diagnose. I doubt that this is diet related and I think that your current ration is much better than the previous one with grain and alfalfa. The approach should include examination of your donkey's teeth, a parasite exam of feces, considering sand or gravel accumulation in the large colon (this can be done by stethoscope, "panning" manure for mineral material, ultrasound, or radiographs), and a some blood work looking for chronic inflammation or metabolic problems. In some parts of the US feeding alfalfa is associated with the slow development of stones in the right dorsal colon (enteroliths) and your veterinarian would know if this is likely in your area. The exact symptoms shown during the episode are also important and may point to intestinal, gastric (ulcers), or other problems that cause unwillingness to eat, rolling, recumbency and other behaviors that are associated with abdominal pain. Examination and "work up" by a competent equine veterinarian would be a good idea, as is scrupulous record keeping. You did a good job of recording diet change, and it would be a good idea to include time of day, time fed, specific symptoms and when the resolved, and even stage of estrus (if this is a jennet). Sorry that there is not a simpler answer. I wish you luck and share your concern.

Sugar beets, depending on their degree of maturity (and therefor sugar content) could cause serious problems in a donkey. Though it is unlikely that just one would cause founder (laminitis) it is certainly possible. The other danger from sugar beets is choke. Large animals tend to bolt the tasty tubers and can get them stuck in their esophagus. Many years ago, when farms around Davis, California, raised a lot of sugar beets, they used to graze cattle on the leftovers after the beets had been topped and harvested. Some of my classmates had jobs "ridin' beets", in which they would ride through the fields looking for cattle choking on beet tops. They would open the animal and reach down their mouth and gullet to pull out pieces of beet that were stuck there. Carrots, celery, chard, or cucumbers are fine, but no beets.

There are a variety of treats given that the donkey is on a good diet, like yours is. Some trainers like just plain whole oats as a reward or treat. A few handfuls of a high fiber grain like that is okay, as a reward in training. I have found small pellets and oats a little clumsy to handle and we use just thin carrot slices. One can also use celery or cucumbers....or chard, depending on what you grow in your garden. We grow all these, feed a "salad" to all donkeys once a day (in addition to some hay and straw) and they do great. Some like carrots more than cucumber and visa versa. You just have to experiment.

I am pretty conservative about feed supplements for donkeys, or horses for that matter. I am fortunate in that I live in the Sacramento valley where, for many millennia, minerals have washed out of the mountains of a large geographic area in Northern California. So mineral and trace element deficiencies are rare. Up where I used to live, where that water started in those mountains, things like Selenium and Copper deficiencies were not unusual. I guess the point is: it depends. The quality of forage fed and where it is grown has a large effect on the need for mineral and vitamin supplementation. I know of a colleague who likes California Trace. It is not only a good source of trace elements (Selenium, Copper, Magnesium, Zinc) but also it has a good mix of sulfur amino acids which some research suggests are good for hoof quality. Vitamins, other than Vitamin E (can be deficient in poorly cured hay), are rarely necessary. Donkeys (and horses) make B vitamins and others in their colon. So spending money on these supplements is not a good investment, though more of them has no deleterious effect. Horse Guard is okay too, as long as it does not contain molasses or other highly digestible sugar calories. I couldn't find a feed analysis for Horse Guard.

My short answer is yes. I live in central NY where selenium deficient soils are a huge problem. That may not be the case in your location. However, donkeys do need other vitamins and minerals that are typically not present in sufficient quantities in most dry forages. Also, in my experience, even providing the salt blocks that contain selenium and other trace nutrients are not usually sufficient either. I find that the donkeys just don’t tend to lick them enough to consume adequate quantities. I would recommend feeding California Trace once daily at the dose provided on the label. It is a great way to be sure they are getting the essential micronutrients that they need and, if your donkeys are anything like mine, they will even think of it as a treat too and look forward to it each day.

We have fed Teff hay to donkeys with good results. It is always a good idea to have hay tested as it may vary in non-structural Carbohydrates, fiber, protein, and minerals depending on where it is grown and how it is cured.

It would be very hard to keep a donkey from getting fat in a place with as much rainfall and grass as NC. Remember these animals evolved to live in an extreme desert environment and are MUCH more efficient in digesting forage than horses. We just identified a 30+ year old donkey that had lived its entire life in Death Valley and was it good shape. That is a tough and efficient animal. It is really important that donkeys not be allowed to get fat, because when they do, it is difficult to get them to lose weight and they are at risk for metabolic diseases and laminitis. Recommendations:
Do not feed your donkey grain ever. It is unnecessary and has way too much digestible calories for a donkey.
IF the donkey is going to be on pasture it needs to be pasture that is as dry as possible. The high energy spring growth should be avoided. This can be done by strip grazing or chopping the grass really short. Muzzles are another option, as is dry lot, though donkeys like to get out in a pasture.
Do not feed the donkey with the horses because horse nutritional requirements are much different and horse feed and hay is just too rich.
Feed a high fiber, properly cured, grass hay or straw as the primary roughage. We feed our donkeys primarily straw with just a little rye grass hay here in California and they do great. The Donkey Sanctuary recommends feeding barley straw. Costal Bermuda, Orchard grass, and Teff hays are okay, but should be tested to make sure they are not too high in non-structural carbohydrates. Hays differ around the country so it is hard to make blanket recommendations. DO utilize advice from The Donkey Sanctuary, especially since they are in an environment that has similar rainfall characteristics to NC. Do NOT use advice on Face Book, unless the content is curated (such as the PVDR site), there are just too many pseudo-experts on social media.
Finally: make sure your donkey gets plenty of exercise. You can easily train them to drive or pack, and hiking or running with your donkey is one of my favorites.

First I would want to know: are you treating the PPID with Pergolide. We will have at talk on this topic at the DWS this year. With pituitary metabolic disease you are going to the a redistribution of fat to the ventral abdomen (which tends to occur in older donkeys either way). If diarrhea was an issue I would DEFINITELY have a veterinarian auscultate, ultrasound, and/or x-ray the abdomen looking for sand. Also, the teeth definitely need examination because PPID is associated with dental disease and the will affect feed conversion. I would not be in a great hurry to increase protein intake until these issues have been sorted out, as high levels of protein that are not used for muscle formation, which will only occur at a low level in an older donkey, will increase the nitrogen load on the old kidneys. As a feed in older donkeys, particularly if they have bad teeth is Purina's Equine Senior. We had a small standard donkey that was living entirely on Equine Senior at the rate of 9 cups a day. He really got no other feed. In an animal with some dental ability, no sand, and controlled PPID, one might start at 6 cups a day, but I would definitely measure the donkey with a weight tape regularly, to monitor weight game and avoid the development of obesity. Be realistic about 'building her topline'. Metabolic disease driven by a PPID will determine the donkey's body confirmation, no matter what.

All equines of all ages, but especially younger ones, will do a little "coprophagy" (eating manure). There is no evidence that this demonstrates a deficiency of any kind. My adult donkeys do it from time to time. It does not hurt them in any way and the only thing that I would worry about is that the donkey may be looking for more "environmental enrichment" (toys, logs to chew on, other donkeys to wrestle with, or some human interaction). You might try taking him for a walk daily or other activity. However, either way, don't worry about it.

A broken crest is not a health problem for a donkey, as long as it is no longer obese. This condition does not affect that animal's soundness in any way, just its looks.

It is EXTREMELY unlikely that a donkey eating good quality forage would need copper supplementation. Unless your particular part of the country has severely copper deficient soils and forage (local agricultural extension office could tell you this), do not worry about copper supplementation.

So it looks like the small amount of information available on the amount of time that donkeys spend 'down' suggests that it is something like 1.75% of their daily cycle. Some researchers are working on using some modern technology to measure this more accurately. I think the owner of this donkey should consider pain as a possible cause, even though it is eating etc. A symmetrical gait does not guarantee lack of pain. Veterinary examination and the phenylbutazone (2-4 mg/kg or 1-2 mg/lb) test for a couple of days would be warranted.

Approximately 2% of their body weight in grass hay spread out over 2 - 3 feedings per day.

These are always tough cases. Yes, your veterinarian is right in that obesity can result in liver damage or a "fatty liver syndrome". Just like in other animals (dogs, cats, and humans....) losing excess weight is hard and takes time. Don't get impatient. It also takes both a decrease in digestible calories AND an increase in exercise. What we have had the best luck with is using a high fiber roughage, because it keeps the donkeys happy, gives them something to do, and exercises their digestive track without providing a lot of calories. The Donkey Sanctuary recommends Barley Straw (the stems of the barley plant without any grain on it) as the best roughage. the trouble is that in most of the USA barley is not a common crop. So, instead, we have used wheat straw and it has worked just fine. This is usually reserved for horse bedding in the USA, but donkeys can use it quite effectively as feed. Make sure that there are no wheat heads in the straw and have your donkey's mouth examined to make sure the teeth are in good shape. Obviously, the donkey needs to be fenced out of places where it can "help" the horses with their feed and NO green pasture. Donkey are just not evolved to live on highly digestible feeds. Then, start taking walks with your donkey or teach it how to do obstacle courses or (what I have done) train it to pull a wagon. Donkeys enjoy "having a job" and "getting out". They are very easy to train and it is FUN! The nutrients that donkeys need that are not found in straw, are few and can be supplemented with a variety of calorie free additions to the diet, that you can feed with a low-cal treat like some chopped carrots, cucumbers, or chard.

It depends a lot on what is in the lick tub. If it is salt, other electrolytes, and trace elements, then there really isn't any danger to the donkey. On the other hand if it contains highly digestible energy sources such as molasses, beet pulp, or fats/oils it could very well be harmful to a donkey, with its much lower energy requirement and high propensity for obesity.

I would start with a good dental exam. Particularly with age this can seriously affect body condition and feed conversion. Deworming is a good idea, but a fecal exam 2 weeks after deworming will tell you if she has encysted small strongyles. She may require a Fenbendazole power pack. Deworming should always be evaluated by fecal analysis. We were teaching owners how to do these at the donkey welfare symposium. All you need is a child's microscope. After that, assuming the diet is adequate, it may be necessary to investigate further by some blood work: complete blood count (looking for evidence of anemia or internal abscesses), fibrinogen or Serum Amyloid A (measures of inflammation), and serum chemistries (looking at liver, kidney, and other organ function). This sounds like a lot but it is only two small tubes of blood. As a basic principle: it is better to invest the money on the front end, and get a diagnosis, than to simply try things hoping for improvement. The approach can waste time and end up expending more money (not to mention the mule's welfare), in the long run. Many mules do have a body form with prominent hip bones and a pendulous abdomen, but if you feel it is getting worse rapidly, the above is the approach that I would take.

I would also add that, depending on where the mule has come from and the selenium content of the soil, as well as the feed it has been on, it may be worthwhile to check the selenium and vitamin E status of this animal as well. These can also be run on the same two tubes of blood mentioned for the other diagnostics listed. Deficiency in one or both of these nutrients can result in muscle wasting. Additionally, if the mule is older (like >15 years of age), it may also be worthwhile to have your veterinarian check ACTH levels (also a blood test) to determine if the mule has Cushing’s disease (another illness that can result in muscle atrophy and a pendulous abdomen).

There is some controversy over the exact dosage of flunixin (Banamine) in donkeys. Because they metabolize more rapidly than horses do, some have recommended a higher dose or giving it more frequently. More recently others have suggested sticking to the horse dosage because of concerns about toxicity. We use 1 mg/kg which is the horse dose and have found it efficacious and safe. Two other things to point out:

- Flunixin has the potential for hurting a donkey in several ways: it can injure the kidney at high doses or if the animal is dehydrated, it can cause gastric ulcers, and when give by intramuscular injection it can cause a serious bacterial infection call "Clostridal myositis". Any evidence of swelling or pain at the injection site should be addressed right away. This may require antibiotics or surgically opening the injection abscess. I would avoid intramuscular injection. Flunixin is well absorbed orally. We only give it by intravenous injection.

- If your donkey is colicing repeatedly a you should have a thorough veterinary workup. This should include a dental exam, blood panel, and, potentially abdominal ultrasound or radiography. this sounds like a lot, but colic means that there is something significant going on in the donkey's abdomen which could get worse and could be serious. Having a baseline of information will pay off in getting an accurate diagnosis. It would also be a very good idea to keep a record of any colic symptoms (agitation, rolling repeatedly, anorexia, etc) AND the donkey's heat cycles if it is a jennet. I actually keep a jennet who has mild colic episodes as part of her estrus. We prevent these will flunixin given orally when we know she is coming into heat.

Anyway, this topic is a bit more complex than it may seem...the short answer is 1 mg/kg, but get a diagnosis on the colic first.

No, healthy donkeys should be fed a good quality grass hay. Supplemental grain is rarely needed. At PVDR, we only supplement those in poor body condition and nursing moms.

Peaceful Valley provides a good quality coastal bermuda grass hay for all of our general population. We feed 1-1/2% of their body weight daily and allow for competition and waste (about 10 pound for a standard.