# Attack Donkey



## mariaricarto (Jul 1, 2010)

I have 2 separate pastures. One has my sheep on it, the other 2 horses and a donkey. I'd like to put them all together to make my chores easier, but the donkey runs after the sheep. I think she would hurt them if she could catch them. 20 years ago I had a sheep with the donkey and they were close friends, but now she is avid to get at these ones.

Is there any hope for harmony?


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## Plowpoint (May 2, 2012)

mariaricarto said:


> I have 2 separate pastures. One has my sheep on it, the other 2 horses and a donkey. I'd like to put them all together to make my chores easier, but the donkey runs after the sheep. I think she would hurt them if she could catch them. 20 years ago I had a sheep with the donkey and they were close friends, but now she is avid to get at these ones.
> 
> Is there any hope for harmony?


I doubt it and I say this with real world experience.

Like you I had a donkey but like yours it chased the sheep and showed signs of aggression. Still it ran with the sheep.

Then one day I looked up to here the sheep baaing and saw the donkey biting and trying to kill a sheep...a nice 200 pound Montadale. He had her right by the throat and was shaking her like a rag doll. I jumped in the pasture to rid her of the donkey, but he started to chase me. So I jumped back out of the pasture and headed to go get a rifle.

In the meantime he started to go after another sheep in his disgruntled fit of rage. When he did, the sheep that he just attacked and was playing dead got up and ran for the sheep barn. The donkey took off after him but missed the corner and ran into another part of the barn. I flipped a gate after him and penned him up, alone and safe. Obviously that donkey had to be dealt with swiftly and decisively since I do NOT pass problem animals on to others.

I thought I was going to have to put the sheep down too because the donkey had taken bites out of her hide here and there, but she recovered and actually lived quite long for a sheep.

I type this story out because if a donkey shows signs of aggression towards your sheep, I HIGHLY recommend that you don't co-graze them lest you deal with what I did. Now I say this with a caveat. That donkey was an uncut Jack, I am sure that a mild mannered Jenny might actually work well with the sheep, but a Jack...not so much. I know a neighbor has a donkey and he kills most of her lamb crop every year...I have sen him do it by drop kicking them.

The best part is; that Donkey's name was Obama!!  I am a die hard Republican and the word Ass and Obama just kind of fits together I think!


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## Maura (Jun 6, 2004)

Guard donkeys are jennets or gelded jacks. Read Plowpoints post to see why. Any guard animal needs to bond with the sheep while they are babies. Ours were 4 months and 7 months when they came here and we kept them adjacent to the sheep all winter. Young donkeys are full of vinegar and will play with the sheep when they get bored, so you have to watch that. Donkeys are too rough to play with sheep. Now, the girls are six years old and take good care of the sheep. Your donkey was probably not raised with sheep and has been kept separate from them for a long time, so he is never going to be good with them.


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## mariaricarto (Jul 1, 2010)

Mine is a jennet. It seems her attachment to a sheep in the past was just for that particular sheep, not sheep in general.


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## bergere (May 11, 2002)

Most donkeys I have been around, can't be trusted in with Sheep/goats/chickens..etc...
Even the one I had. 
Like yours, she was great with horses.... but not anything else. And sadly, there is no way to change their behavior.


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## sheepish (Dec 9, 2006)

We have had 2 donkeys. The first was a jack that we got from a cattle farmer at about 10 mos. We had him gelded. He was pretty good with the ewes, but the first spring he picked up newborn lambs by the head and broke their jaws. We sold him to someone who wanted a companion for their horse.

The second was a jenny who came from a sheep farm and thinks she is a part of the flock. She sometimes bosses the ewes, but she is gentle and protective of lambs. We have had her for 10 years.


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## mawalla (Oct 28, 2002)

I work for a vet clinic, large and small animal. In the past couple of months we have had a couple of clients that have lost lambs due to being kicked by their "guard" donkeys. Just saying.


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## Kato2010 (Jun 24, 2012)

I raise donkeys. Either they're good with sheep or they're not. It's their individual personalities, rather than their species that decides it. When they are good, they are really good, but when they are bad, they maybe should go to a cow herd to guard. 

An intact jack is hardly ever good. These things are walking hormone factories. REALLY. I do mean that! We bought our first jack to halter break calves, and he was not good with baby calves. He was good with everything else, but there was something about a newborn that turned him into an idiot. Once we got him two jennys for company, he never looked at the calves again, other than to chase coyotes out of the pasture.

One thing that needs to be watched is when you turn a ram in with the ewes. The donkey may think the ram is attacking the ewes, and decide to defend them. We just got sheep this year, and I haven't tried it yet, but I think perhaps putting the ram and donkey alone before breeding time so they can bond with each other may be a good idea. I'll have a chance to find out this year, because I'm going to try it. If it doesn't work, I'll put one of my old jennys in there instead.


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## CJBegins (Nov 20, 2009)

I had a mule attack my baby calves. He would go out of his way to trap the calf and then sling it around by it's neck. He was fine with the horses, donkeys and was fine the the cows until they started having babies. 
That mule went to a guy that had years of experience working with them. Hopefully, he turned into a decent ride.


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## MDKatie (Dec 13, 2010)

I had a small standard gelding. I had him gelded as soon as I got him, and he was probably 3-4 yrs old then. He stayed in with my sheep and goats and for the most part was ok with them. One day he decided he didn't like one of the goats, and bit him on the neck. The goat ended up dying. I was away at college at the time, and couldn't really come down and separate them and my parents were doing the best they could. He was fine with the rest of the flock though, so we left him in. Then I got a goat kid, who was separated from him. The goat kid managed to escape his pen and the donkey killed him as well. Fast forward about 6 months, and the donkey moved with me to a farm where he was put in with my sheep, goats, and some calves. He mostly did ok, but he really liked chasing the animals. We saw him fling a calf by the neck, so that day I contacted a donkey rescue and asked for help placing him in a new home. He went to live on a farm with other donkeys. I really think he was unhappy and bored, and took it out on the smaller animals. 

I will NEVER ever recommend anyone using a donkey as a guard animal. IMO, they're too intelligent to stay with a bunch of sheep or goats, and they need other equine companionship. I think those who haven't had issues are just lucky, and I think it will be a matter of time before there's an incident. I hope not, but I don't trust them. I love donkeys, but not as guard animals.


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## Kato2010 (Jun 24, 2012)

And yet I sold a jenny to a fellow who had sheep many years ago. He took her home, put her in the sheep pen, and that was it. They were lambing at the time, and he had some very tiny lambs. The donkey had never even seen a sheep before that day. I saw he had an ad online a couple of weeks ago to find her a retirement home. She was there for fifteen years, and he never lost a lamb. 

I also have a friend who's donkey absolutely would not stop herding the cows and chasing the calves. Gelding him made no difference. He had to get rid of him. Two donkeys.. one couldn't have worked out better, and one was a wreck.


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## Plowpoint (May 2, 2012)

Kato2010...I wonder if it was because the successful donkey was introduced to the lambs at the same time she was introduced to the farm?

I was told the reason a donkey kills lambs is, they think being so small they do not belong with the flock. They do not look at a lamb as a small sheep like we do, but as simply not belonging there.

If that is the case, then the successful donkey went to a farm where she saw both small sheep and large sheep and assumed both sizes belonged to there.

I am not sure, but it kind of makes sense. If that is the case then introducing a donkey to a sheep operation would be best done at lambing season...something I would never recommend, but it seems you client did right by doing so. I am NOT saying this is the way to do it, I am just wondering out loud if this reasoning would be the trick to get donkeys to bond with a flock???????


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## Kato2010 (Jun 24, 2012)

mmm... You just may have something there. Which would also have something to do with how some donkeys will go after a ram when it's introduced to the flock. We've always had our donkeys with our cattle, so now that we've gotten some sheep, I'm sure I can do lots of research on it.


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