The Blanket Test

"Does my donkey need a blanket?"

This is probably the number one question that I see pop up on Facebook and donkey related conversations, especially with this onset of frigid temperatures.  The answer I have come up with is: maybe.

As Emma and Ramsey have demonstrated for us this year, a baby donkey less than 4 years old will very likely benefit from a blanket if you are in a very cold, windy climate.  A healthy adult donkey in good condition with plenty of roughage to keep the internal fires burning will probably be just fine.

A few signs of a cold donkey are a tightly clamped tail, hunched back, grumpiness and unwillingness to be touched.  Those things are all rather subjective though so it can still be hard to tell.  Fortunately, there is a very simple test that will tell you right off if your particular donkey really, truly needs a blanket (this works for horses too).  All you really need to do is go ask your donkey, here's how:

• Step 1: Go out and put a blanket on your donkey (if you haven't got a proper blanket, an old quilt will do for the moment) and watch him very carefully.
• Step 2: If the animal begins to shiver within a few minutes, than he needs a blanket.
• Step 3: If there is no shivering within ten minutes, than he will continue to be fine (and safer) running around naked.
• If your donkey had been rather grumpy and irritable and cheers up with a blanket on, but does not shiver, than he will likely appreciate having a blanket.  He will get along OK without it if you are opposed to blankets, but he might like one.

The reason this works is that if the animal is really, truly cold, then their shiver mechanism will be triggered as they begin to warm up with the blanket on. They will shiver for a few minutes just at the beginning as they start to get warmer and then quit once they are warm, which is why you have to watch closely, this is a transient thing that usually will only last a few minutes.

The second most frequently asked question is: where can I get a blanket for my donkey and which one should I buy?

After trying on a number of blankets, the one that I find works best for my donkeys is the medium weight Rhino Pony Wug (that really is how they spell it) with a high neck.  Ramsey is modeling his new Wug....

He most definitely wanted a blanket.  He was really rather grumpy in the cold, which is highly unlike him, and when I put a blanket on him, he shivered hard for several minutes until he warmed up.  He is much happier snuggled into his Wug.  Emma, on the other hand, did not show signs of being cold this year and wanted no part of blankets.

If the Rhino is too expensive or you can't find one, look for something with a high neck.  I have found that a lot of blankets do not fit my donkeys well, especially around the shoulders.  Below is the blanket Emma wore last year.  It fit well, but you can see that it puts a lot of pressure on her chest and withers.  It rubbed quite a bit by the end of the season.  It never made her sore, it worked and it was half the price, but I worried about it pinching the nerves in her shoulders and would go with another's Rhino if I had to.

As for where to buy a blanket for a donkey, I have had good luck finding small sizes in two places:

Just For Ponies

Dover Saddlery

The Rhino blankets are not cheap, the one Ramsey is wearing sells for $180 unless you can find a good sale.  They do hold up well though.  I rather wish Rhino was paying me to say all this, but alas, this is all just my opinion on a question I get asked quite frequently.

There is one other one-time-only buying opportunity...You can buy this Rhino Wug that my two have both outgrown....

It is a size 51, is three years old and still in excellent condition.  The only damage it has is that one of the little metal rings that attatches the butt strap is gone.  I have contrapted a repair that works just fine, but the little ring is missing.

If anyone is interested or in dire need, get in touch....aerissana@gmail dot com

Red sky at night....

A Room With a view

One of Connor's recent accomplishments was figuring how to get onto this rocking chair....

The chair swivels and rocks and provides a good view out the window as well as the rest of the house.  He is very proud of himself for accomplishing this feat and this is quickly becoming his chair from wence he can survey his kingdom.

 Since it was 2 degrees with 30 mph winds today, I think he has the right idea.

After he gets his walk in the woods that is.

Otherwise, he thinks he should just eat the chair.

Foot Update

It's been ages since I posted foot photos.  I'm not sure why, lack of motivation I guess.  So, time for a Ramsey update.  He is doing well and is sound again except for a little ouchiness on hard ground.  The tendon has relaxed as well except for occasional moments when he is tired and I see him unload that leg a bit.  

The foot is growing in well from the abscess.  It looks pretty good aside from the gaping hole on the left where the infection was.  That is the part of the hoof that never truly grows in because of the missing bone.  

If you look really closely at the above photo, you can see that hoof has a very slight twist to it and see that the entire hoof points to the right.  That is a reflection of the twist in the fetlock joint above.  The foot has adapted to support the limb, but it is always a balancing act to trim this foot and keep all of its little peculiarities in equilibrium.  It is doing well though.

I do kick myself about that latest abscess.  I usually wrap his foot just as a precaution whenever it gets really muddy, which it was for most of December.  I was busy, stressed, distracted by the puppy and I had one of those dumb conversations with myself, you know the one....."the foot is doing well, Ramsey is sound, I don't really need to bother with that do I?"

I don't know about you, but anytime I ask myself that kind of question, the answer is always YES, I damn well DO need to bother.  The very fact that I am asking the question should be answer enough.  

Which is why I ordered a whole case of elastikon for Christmas.

The Mailman

Stockpiling Grass

No, not that kind of grass.  This kind of grass....

For  the past couple of years I've been using a track system to limit the amount of grass my little herd has access to while also maximizing movement.  There is a track that goes all the way around the perimeter of the field and that is what they graze on during the summer.  A byproduct of the system is that the vast majority of my pasture goes ungrazed all summer.  I did mow most of it mid summer and then left it alone again.

This Fall, I began giving the beasties a bit of this grass each day using strip grazing.  This is very easy with the portable fence I use.  Every day, I go out and move a small section of the fence inwards a few feet, giving them access to that untouched grass.  I usually move the fence in a different spot each day and sometimes I make smaller strips in several places around the track.  It's sort of a hide-n-seek game and they have to go out tromping round the track to find the good stuff.  They love it.  They are even willing to go out in the snow and dig for their supper. 

There are several benefits to this that I had not anticipated as it started out as merely a way to encourage exercise and alleviate boredom.  The first and most notable benefit is that we have made it all the way to the new year and I have only used about 50 bales of hay so far.  They are small 25 pound bales so that is not much hay at all.  They do have access to hay and straw in the barn, but they would rather be out grazing, even in weather that they used to refuse to venture out in.

I believe that that willingness to be out moving around, rather than standing about waiting for me to show up with more food, is one of the reasons that Emma didn't need a blanket this year.  She was too busy out searching for delicacies to be moping about the cold and it gave her winter coat a chance to catch up.  That, and she has matured a lot this year and seems to be generally much more rugged now.

This whole grazing experiment has me really rethinking our traditional pasture management practices, especially for horses and donkeys.  Rotational grazing works great if you have animals with high energy needs.  The beef cattle fatten up beautifully that way and it is very good for the land, but it would kill the donkeys.  It's not so good for horses either unless they are elderly, in intense work, lactating or young stock who need a lot of calories. 

Most horse owners just let all their animals loose on however much land they have available to them or alternate them between a couple of large paddocks.  Even with fairly low numbers of animals, the pasture will generally be exhausted by September and the animals will need to be fed hay until Spring. 

Horses are especially tough on pasture because of the way they graze.  They will nibble their preferred grasses down to the roots while leaving other areas untouched except to use those spots as designated bathroom areas.  The short areas are prone to damage because there is not enough sod to protect the soil and the long areas become weed infested and the manure too concentrated. It wouldn't be an issue if the horses were out wandering the vast prairies they are designed for, but it is very hard on the enclosed land that we keep them on.  It's also not so good for the horses.  Stressed grass makes and stores more sugar and too much sugar is the number one cause of health issues in domestic horses other than musculoskeletal problems.

With the combination of using a track all summer and grazing the interior all winter, I have effectively extended my grazing season indefinitely.  Since I am giving them access to this grass in very small amounts each day, they graze the entire strip, leaving no high spots.  Since they get new grass each day, they don't overgraze the previous days offerings.  When they graze this way, they don't create designated bathroom areas so their manure ends up spread out evenly all over the field.  It becomes valuable fertilizer rather than troublesome waste with no extra work on my part.

I am limiting the pasture stress to a narrow strip around the perimeter of the field while maximizing soil and grass health on the majority of the land, and I've drastically cut the hay bill while doing it - at least as long as the snow doesn't get too deep.  That is the one real limiting factor here in the North East.  They will dig through some snow, but they can't dig through LOTS of snow. 

Even in a really bad year though, this still works.  Last year was about as bad as it gets, but in the early Spring, after the snow had gone but before the new growth came in, I turned my herd out on the whole field.  It's something I never would have done in the past as I would not have wanted them out there damaging the new growth and digging things up.  However, since I am always battling the bulge and the mud was awful, I said to hell with it and turned them out.  After being cooped up in the barn by the frigid temps and deep snow, they were thrilled to get out and graze all that winter-killed grass.  Two months before I would normally start the grazing season, they quit eating hay in favor of the stock piled grass.  It was a good thing too as FB ran out of hay last year and took 150 bales out of here to fill the gap.  I would never have had it to spare were it not for my "stored" grass.  They did dig up the ground a bit here and there, but with the entire growing season to recover, the damage disappeared.

Best of all, my herd loves this.  Rather than standing around in the barn all day twiddling their ears, they are out doing what they are meant to do.  As soon as I head out to move the fence, they fall in behind me, eager to get to the new goodies.  For anyone who relies on any amount of pasture to keep their critters fed, you might want to give this a try.  It's a win, win, win for the land, the animals and the checkbook.

A New Year

I am not sorry to see the last of this year.  It seems like everyone I know lost someone they loved in 2014.

Riding Buddy lost Lakota.  Some other friends lost a lovely 6 year old draft horse mare to a freak accident where she drove a sliver of wood the size of a pencil through the back of her foot.  It damaged the coffin joint, infected the bone and no amount of surgery was able to save her. 

There are others and I could go on, but who wants to. 

For me, it's been a year of frustrations, it seems like everything was a fight this year.  Every piece of machinery I own broke down repeatedly.  I still haven't managed to repair all the damage caused by last winter's extreme cold.  Its been a constant struggle coming to terms with a variety of health issues that have nowhere to go but downhill from here.  Its been an unending battle with all things relating to health care, and that includes my hospital job.  I'm not going to talk about that here, suffice to say that the thing that comes to mind whenever I think of my job these days, which is far, far too often, is Lord of the Flies.

For this coming year....I don't make resolutions.  I am not setting any goals.  I am going to hold tight to the things that have always been my anchors, my loadstones, my reason. 

I will fight what needs fighting.

Try to embrace the good days.

And keep on keeping on, holding tight to all the bright lights that come my way.

Happy New Year.