Donkey Whisperer Farm ® On-Line Learning Is The Leader For On-Line Education Worldwide!
Teach your donkey to have social skills and manners via Donkey 101 & 102 Video On Demand. Use our soft yacht rope donkey halters with matching lead lines to speed up your donkey’s learning time.
Teach your donkey to follow you as a fair leader, not a treat dispenser, bully or abuser. Melody Johnson trains the owner or caretaker on how to scan the donkey for stress, relaxation, and naughty behavior and get your donkey excited to learn and follow you as a leader.
Teach your donkey to have excellent manners and act like a partner for the basics while standing for the vet, farrier, and traveling to new places. Call your donkey and watch your donkey run to you, stand and not leave you! Donkeys are intelligent, donkeys train the owner to do exactly what the donkey wants to do and nothing more.
GOD bless you and your family two and four-legged!
Donkeys are born with their unique personality, extroverts are more go than whoa. Introvert more whoa than go. Did you know introvert donkeys do not bray? Yes, it’s true the true deep introvert donkey will make a little bit of noise but will never let out a full bray.
Training the introvert takes a bunch of patience and a plan. Why? Everything the introvert does new takes longer to process the information and learn to trust. The donkeys’ gift is the ability to problem-solve and think. Donkeys do not want to do anything that may or may not hurt them or worse kill them. The horse’s gift is speed. Horses when scared fart, poop, and run.
GOD bless you and your family two and four-legged!
This is wrong! Very few donkeys make great livestock guardians. Please get a livestock guarding dog to protect your livestock. Donkeys will guard the animals they are bonded to if they are big enough. A miniature donkey is too small to guard anything. Domesticated dogs can kill a miniature donkey. Donkeys bond for life to their own species. If a donkey is placed in with a flock of sheep that it does not know, the donkey may grab the neck of the sheep and kill it. This is not a bad donkey it is simply donkey behavior. Donkeys do best when they get to live with another donkey. Donkeys will kill newborn baby cows, sheep and goats, pigs etc., so best to keep the babies away from donkeys. Donkeys grab the neck of another donkey in play and in battle, play tug with a ball, sleep, drink and eat together basically book ends. Dogs, most donkeys do not like dogs they resemble the wolf and coyote. We have hot wire fences to keep our donkeys in and the dogs out. Sadly farmers end up burying the donkey, re-sell give away a donkey who has not performed the job as livestock guarding to their satisfaction.
Donkey Diet& Care
Donkeys evolved from the desert. Donkeys need a serious diet and cannot eat all day and night on pasture or brush. Most livestock is fed an extremely rich diet full of grains and lush pasture. Donkeys who are fed rich food or overfed grass or brush will get insulin resistance, white line disease, fat deposits on the body, neck gets fat and can break over, hoof abscesses, laminitis. Hoof abscesses are common with a rich diet, the liver fails and soon the donkey dies a painfully slow death. Donkeys are stoic and will never show pain until it is too late.
Hay and all forage must be tested to come in at 10% or lower in sugar and protein along with portion control as donkeys gain weight quickly. Donkeys need shelter, clean water, warm in freezing climates and salt. Donkeys do not do well standing in the rain with no shelter due to their thick fur. Some donkeys need a blanket as they cant take the freezing temperatures and this blanket needs to be changed and checked. Donkeys need their hooves trimmed, vet care teeth, shots, fecal sample before worming spring and summer.
Donkeys need great fences and locks as donkeys can visually watch you do something and repeat the task.
Donkeys Are Intelligent, Not Stubborn
Donkeys are not flight animals like horses, most donkeys do not react to physical force to do a task. Donkeys push into pressure. Donkeys can freeze when scared or fight back. Please take the time to learn donkey behavior and personality. Extroverts bray and have more go than whoa, introverts do not bray and have more whoa than go. I teach about this in Donkey 102 video on demand. Donkeys need to see a reason for everything they do. Since donkeys evolved from the desert they learned how to survive with their mind as they do not have the speed of a horse to outrun the predator. Donkeys are deep thinkers game players. I call this ON DONKEY TIME ®. The donkey will never do anything that can hurt the donkey. Self-preservation is number one to a donkey. Donkeys ears back can mean anger, thinking, happy to see you. Learn to read the eyes of your donkey not the ears. The horse will jump off the grand canyon when scared, the donkey will not, do you see the difference? A donkeys’ gift is not sped it is a brain that can problem-solve to stay alive.
Donkeys are incredibly strong.
Donkeys have a reputation for being strong pack animals and while this is true, they are not stronger than another animal of the same size. Donkeys can only hold up to 20% of their weight. Donkeys must be full-grown and conditioned to do heavy work.
When Is A Donkey Full-Grown?
Miniature Donkeys age three
Standard or Burro age four
Mammoth Donkeys six to seven
If you would like to learn how to train your donkey go to the Donkey Whisperer Farm ® education center. Melody Johnson trains the owner or caretaker worldwide via Donkey 101 & 102 Video On Demand, use your smartphone to take Melody to the farm with you.
GOD bless you and your family two and four-legged!
First and most importantly understanding the personality of our donkey is imperative to learning donkey communication and behavior traits. Rio our Mammoth donkey is an introvert he has never ever let out a complete bray, Rio is fifteen years old. Rio has been in our life since he was nine months old, he came with Rocket Man our Miniature Donkey and our horse miss Lily.
Tuba, Oboe, Rocket Man, Maximus, and Roy are all extroverts. Miss Lily, Miss Trophy are extroverted mares our horses. Donkeys bray to say hello, when playing tag and grabbing the neck and to let us know something is wrong the distress bray. Donkeys that bray all of the time are not living a healthy and happy life, something is wrong. It is important to learn how to give the donkey a balanced and fair life. Another donkey same-sex and size is always the best. Jacks should be gelded by a vet who has experience with gelding donkeys and the digestion of drugs. Forcing a donkey to live alone in isolation is not only wrong it is abuse as donkeys need to live with another donkey preferably and should never live in isolation day after day. Donkeys eat, sleep, play, grab the neck, play tug with an orange traffic cone or jolly ball with another donkey. Donkeys become book ends with their pastuer buddy. Donkeys bond for life to another donkey and to their special human who cares for them. Never betray a donkey as donkeys have excellent memories. Donkeys are truly special.
Select Our Store To Order Donkey Tack, Donkey Training, and Donkey Gifts.
Donkeys Braying Singing or Distress “Crying For Help”
When I first started reading about donkeys people would say my donkey sings when talking about the donkey braying.Donkeys can sing and donkeys can bray a distress bray. I respectfully disagree that braying is all the same as it is not. Just like dogs can sing along with their human and dogs can bark when stressed so can donkeys. I do think a high-pitched sound like the violin can make a donkey bray and this is singing, similar to a dog who will sing along when we encourage them with high notes. The donkey has amazing hearing. I think when the donkey hears another donkey braying with the distress bray they understand the distress sound as it is their language.
Please don’t think a donkey that brays all the time is normal something needs to be corrected to keep the donkey relaxed and calm.
Like a dog that keeps barking in the neighborhood, this is not normal for a dog to keep barking and barking frantically. Most dogs bark when something stresses them out, they are tied and distressed, they hear something or like mine when I come home to greet me. Some animals are more vocal than other animals just like people have personalities I believe animals have personalities! Some animals are more vocal and extroverted and some are more introverted and quiet.
When I step out into the barn all the Extroverts say good morning and then they stop, it is brief and very inviting. We have one introverted donkey out of six on the farm. Mr. Rio our Mammoth donkey. Rio stands back and waits patiently at the door for his morning kiss. Some mornings he kicks the door. Introverted donkeys communicate differently than extroverted donkeys. I clean the gunk out of all the donkey’s eyes, scan for any sores as donkeys play rough.
Listen to Rocket Man our miniature Donkey Sing. Please subscribe to our Youtube Channel at Donkeywhisperer.
Please remember if your donkey is braying all of the time the distress bray something is wrong, it is important to learn the difference between sing and a distress bray.
“Bringing Your Donkey Home” Free Educational Video
GOD bless you and your family two and four-legged! Melody Johnson, Trainer/Owner Donkey Whisperer Farm ®
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