This page shows some of the things we have built or use here to help us with our donkey chores.
How Much Hay? ~ It was difficult to find information on how much to feed mini donkeys. Some say "Just a flake each morning and evening", but how big is a flake? Ours range from one to four pounds. Or, "A square bale should last you a few days". But how big is the bale? Our bales are about 70 pounds. I finally found a website that recommended 2 pounds of hay per donkey, twice per day. Now, how do I weigh that???"
Here is what I came up with...a Salter Brecknell produce-type scale with a hook under it (rather than a pan) and a plastic bin with a rope attached to it. We only have 17 donkeys, in a variety of paddocks, so this bin works quite well even though it is not large. I can easily pile on about 14 pounds of hay.
Four pounds per donkey was a good starting point. I found that this was a pretty good maintenance amount in summer, and my fatter donkeys could be slowly dieted by reducing the weight slightly, to say 3 or 3.5 pounds per day. On the colder days in winter we do not worry about weighing the hay as the digestion of hay keeps the donkeys warm. We also bed our shelters with barley straw, which the donkeys also eat to stay warm.
Hay Mangers ~ We feed hay in mangers that we built here. They are 3 feet by 6 feet, or 3 feet by 12 feet, depending on how many donkeys we are feeding. We started with a manger 2 feet wide, but the donkeys rooted the hay out of it - they don't do that with a 3 foot wide manger. The mangers are on skids (4" by 4") to keep them up off the ground. The donkeys do not chew on the wooden mangers so long as we are feeding them loose minerals.
Here is a photo of our 3'x6' manger, and we tipped it up on its side to show the skids underneath, made of 4"x4" garden ties. We angled the edges of the skids so we can pick up one end of the manger and easily drag it around the paddock. I had a lot of supervisors helping me take these photographs!
Feeding Minerals ~ We keep a salt/mineral block available at all times, and we feed loose minerals weekly as well. Here is the container we built to hold both. It's not fancy, but it works well and doesn't tip. That is a full size (50#) block on the left, and the right side holds about a gallon of loose mineral powder.
Water ~ We installed automatic waterers between paddocks, so that one waterer serves two or three paddocks at a time. The swing gate keeps the donkeys from sticking their heads into the next paddock (they don't like it when it swings back on their nose), but facilitates being able to clean both water bins from one side - we just flip it up to reach through.
Shelters ~ We custom designed and built our own shelters. This particular one (shown not painted yet) is 10 feet deep and 12 feet wide. My advice, after building several shelters, is make sure you make them big enough. We have two 8'x8' shelters that are cute, but can only house 2 or 3 donkeys each, and one dominant donkey can keep the others out.
In order to keep the donkeys from chewing the 2 by 4 framed walls, the inside and outside walls are lined with plywood, and all edges are covered in metal corner bead (used in drywalling). The shelters are also built on 4"x4" skids to allow them to be dragged by the tractor to wherever we want them. The roof is constructed of 2 by 6's and covered in metal sheeting. It did take the donkeys a little while to get used to the sound of the rain on a metal roof. All of our shelters have mangers in them to allow for feeding on rainy days.
Here are three photos of the shelter showing the front, the corner of the shelter showing the roof construction and corner bead lining, and finally one showing the skids - there's one across the front and one in the back, but both sides are open at the bottom (without the 4 by 4's under them, to facilitate dragging the shelter).
Manure ~ We started out by cleaning up manure into a wheelbarrow and dumping it in piles out back. But those piles get big pretty fast. Now, we clean up directly into a Stablers' rotary Smart Spreader pulled behind the ATV, and then spread it onto sections of our yard where we have no top soil over the glacial till. We hope to expand the size of our grazing areas this way. We can also slowly get rid of those piles that we built up by shoveling them into the spreader, and spreading that as well. Some of it has been composted for two years and makes great top soil. You can get more information about these spreaders at www.thestablers.com.
Finally, here is my Dad, who built the mangers and mineral holders (and helped our builder friend Art with the shelters), with a few of our jennets. I think he was feeding them corn husks!
