Miniature Donkeys

In the beginning when we decided to do the hobby farm thing, we knew we wanted some goats and sheep, but we were worried about coyotes preying on our animals. My sister had seen something on a TV show about donkeys and miniature donkeys being good guard animals. We did some research and found out that donkeys are easy keepers and don’t cost much at all to feed.

We purchased our female miniature donkeys, Skittles and Star, at the same time we selected our first goats and sheep. They were one year old and we quickly fell in love with them. They love attention and in fact if they don’t get hugs from us every day they can get sad. They just love people and kids.

Donkeys have to be at least 3 years old to be mature enough to breed, so after a couple of years, we found Paco, our male donkey and he was the perfect fit for our animal menagerie! Paco gets along well with all the other animals. He was 12 years old when we added him to our farm family. Before e-i-e-i-o, he spent his days pulling work carts on another farm.

Fast forward one year. After Paco had a chance to get acquainted with the girls, we had Snickers (keeping with the candy names, of course), the most adorable little “ass”. I can’t think of anything cuter than a baby donkey−all ears and just like a stuffed animal. He stayed with us almost until his first birthday and then we found a good home for him to make room for Pez, the next donkey baby to be born. I thought Snickers was cute, but Pez was even cuter! He followed us around like a puppy and rolled over so we could rub his belly. We just sold Pez, he was about 8 months old. We are looking forward to the next baby that should be born in September 2012.

A fun fact: Miniature donkeys originally came from Sicily and Sardinia. The first 100 came to America and that was all that was allowed. Since then, all of the miniature donkeys today came from those original 100.