Donkeys or beavers?

The donkeys have been disappearing into the woods for long periods of time these days.  I went to investigate and found that ...

 they had decided to peel the bark off the firewood that is laying on the ground,

 and the branches too!

Later, Rose and I walked to the mailbox and brought home a stuffed day-pack full of mail.  I unloaded the panniers and turned my back for a second.  That's when Dorrie & Siog  played tug of war with the London Review of books.  I guess they couldn't agree on who would digest it first!

Straw delivery!

Well I lucked out!  Someone here is starting a straw bale garden and needed 50 bales, so I jumped on board and ordered 50 bales for us too and we split the delivery cost.  Good deal all around.  I usually buy barley straw in September, but this year, as my hay loft is half empty by now, I thought why not get it sooner than later and have it done!  I'll restack what's up there and make room for the straw and then a load of hay in June.

This is 100 bales on the truck - 50 for us!

But for the time being, it has to be stacked here on the covered porch, tucked behind the wisteria:

It will need to be moved up to the hay loft:

 

But my hay elevator is still in its winter home behind the barn!

This straw is from a dairy farm on Vancouver Island. It's stored in a huge loft above the cows and stays nice and dry.  Last August I bought  2012 straw from this farm and had it tested.  I was so worried that it might be high in sugar and starch but turned out it was pretty perfect  for the donkeys.  If anyone would like a copy of the analysis, leave a comment or send me an email and I'll send you the report.

It is so hard to keep weight off minis!  But now I understand the difference between fat and bulk.  Fat is stored in the neck crest, the saddle area and the rump.  Bulk, which I define as roughage passing through the gut, can make the donkeys look very round (oil drum on legs?) but it's not actually "fat."  

They need this roughage as a protection against the hydrochloric acid which is constantly being produced by the stomach.  The digestive tract needs to be active most of the time.  So straw, which is low in calories, protein and sugar is fantastic added to a basic diet of minimal grass, browse and hay.

New Diet for the Hens

I was given a wonderful little book recently called Fresh Eggs Daily by Lisa Steele.
She's a chicken farmer and also a herbalist and it's this combination that really excites me!  She grows and uses herbs for a wide variety of things - to encourage egg laying, to discourage parasites, to freshen the coop, keep flies away and improve the nutrition and general health of the flock.

I don't have a big stash of dried herbs at the moment, although I do grow quite a variety.  But this is definitely on my list for this year.  Grwo more, dry more!

One thing I have done though is mix up a feed based on what she calls the "Breakfast of Champion Layers!"

While it certainly adds to the cost of the feed, it feels so wonderful to be offering this to my merry band of ten hens. And it will improve the quality of the eggs for sure.

Here's what I mixed up yesterday:

To a big bag of 16% Organic Layer Mash, I added:

1. Hulled sunflower seeds (Purchased in the wild bird feed department)
2. Organic whole oats
3. Cracked corn
4. Flax seed
5. Food grade Diatamaceous Earth (personally I would never feed this to mammals but the hens can handle it)
6. Brewer's yeast

I have a lovely mixed flock made up of  3 Americaunas, 2 Blue Opringtons, 1 Chanticleer, 1 Black Australorpe, 2 Silver Grey Dorkings and 1 Light Brahma.  Here they are enjoying a new batch of feed:

Quite a variety of eggs!

Feeding angst

Since building the feed troughs, I have experimented with keeping some straw in front of the donkeys all day - cut out a hay feeding so they are only getting a hay bag first thing in the AM and last thing at night, around 9 PM and then lots of barley straw (not weighed) throughout the day.  Very limited grazing.

But, my oh my - they are HUGE!  Am I am freaking out!  They will eat anything and everything, including the fences and I really don't like how they look - very wide, kind of like oil drums on legs.  Borderline obese, even!  I'm even embarrassed to post photos of them!  A bit of white line separation going on too.  Awckgh@#^)!!!!

So this past Friday, I gathered samples from 12 bales of barley straw and sent it off to a lab.  There is SO much controversy about feeding straw - many people on the equine nutrition circuit suggest that:
 a) it might be really high in starch and sugars and b) straw in North America might be quite different to what is called straw in the UK.  I really don't know so I figure I'd better have it analyzed.

I would love to be able to feed free-choice - many people do - but these minis are a challenge, gaining weigh so quickly.  I confess that I've never really understood how to feed free choice - I mean, how much would you put out for them at one time? And doesn't this contradict feeding a % of their body weight?  My gang would do well on a maximum of 4 lbs. each mixed hay/ straw per day (even that might be too much if you were feeding by optimum body weight) - but they would gladly eat waaaaay more than that, if it were offered.  And I'm afraid I have been offering way more to see how they would do on straw if it is always there for them.

In the meantime though, I'm afraid I am cutting back their feed somewhat - not withholding food, that would be wrong, but trickle feeding smaller portions frequently and cutting back on the amount of straw, except overnight, when I am really generous.

Increasing their exercise too - they really need jobs to do but it's winter!  In any case, we do "something" every day, a bit of trotting or jumping or walking.  Right now I'm going to halter up Heather and head out for a walk.

More troughs

The donkeys and I have all become very fond of the outdoor feeding trough we built last July! I still use slow feeder hay bags morning and night but during the day, weather permitting, I put a mix of hay and straw in the trough and they come and go.

I'm not comfortable heaping it in there though, as I am paying close attention to weigh and body condition, so I can't say I'm feeding free choice but it is so regular that I'm hoping their metabolisms are settled into a comfortable place of fairly constant digestion.
They have access to some bush too.

I am really trying to minimize food-related stress - an important thing to notice especially with multiple animals competing for food.  They have a tendency to gobble or bully or over eat.  So by leaving food for them, this settles down.  It has to be the "right" food though - low in protein,  sugars and starch and high in fiber.  Sadly, I have yet to find this "perfect" fiber (hay or straw!) so I am still doing a bit of monitoring and doling out.

Anyway, this post was supposed to be about troughs ... I was so disappointed at the thought of not being able to use the outdoor trough during wet weather that I was searching for solutions.  My first thought was to build a roof over the whole thing - big enough to keep the donkeys dry as well as the hay.  But the ground still might get muddy, rain still might blow in, snow might too!

Solution # 2- re-create the trough inside the barn - but where?  The barn has smallish-stalls and a centre aisle and I need to create something that is not an obstruction or potentially dangerous as donkeys come and go.

Hmmm ... aha!  A solution!  Build four new feed troughs into the corners!

These were simple to make.  We filled in sides and backs with plywood, then simply angled the front boards across a corner and attached PVC pipe along the top with metal strapping.  The ends of the PVC go into uprights or are cut snug at an angle into the  wall, so no sharp edges and no chewing the top rails either!

Three built and one to go - the donkeys love them and they are standing on the dry barn floor while eating too!

Fog and mushrooms!

We are well and truly fogged in here!  The forecast says the fog is supposed to lift and give way to sunny  afternoons but no way!  It's a thick enveloping blanket.  Gloomy and damp feeling.

Poor donkeys seem to reflect the mood.  They spend much of the day up in their forest paddock. It's a small climb but the difference in elevation seems to make it it a tad less foggy.  However with the damp Fall comes .... mushrooms!  Eeee gad - they pop out overnight in amazing variation!  I am quite familiar and comfortable gathering chanterelles and oyster mushrooms (yummy!) but do we have those .... No!

Instead we have a melange of unidentified specimens - orange, brown, beige, white and red.  Every morning I crawl around looking for the overnight sprouting of new fungi but there's no way I am able to find them all.  And the donkeys seem to want to EAT them!  Or some of them ...

There has been some diarrhea lately and yesterday I looked out from my studio and noticed that while everyone was grazing, Siog looked positively miserable - head drooping and just ... yucky.  So I grabbed her halter and took her out (that's always the first thing I try and this is a good way of data collecting, in my opinion.)

Once out, she perked up and seemed absolutely fine, even trotting and eating the roadside brush with gusto - phew!  But again today, diarrhea (sorry for the graphic detail!)  I have started to give a small mash with ground flax, a vitamin powder and a day or two a week, I add psyllium.  So hopefully IF they are eating some mushrooms, this will help.

Meanwhile, I have finished the work for my up-coming art exhibition, except for minor details and packing it up.  Next weekend, I am teaching two workshops, then off to the show!

Balancing Vitamins and Minerals for Donkeys

This has always been a head-scratcher as very little research has been done about which vitamins and minerals donkeys need and how much. So we donkey owners tend to feed horse stuff, adjusting the amounts and hoping for the best.  This is probably dumb!

I offer a mineral block that has selenium in it (I know we are deficient here on the west coast) and I also put out a salt lick plus a wall feeder with loose white salt in it.  The donkeys use all of them ... a bit! So maybe that's enough - after all everybody is healthy.

But, but, but ... lately I've been thinking about the idea of being over fed but under nourished.  The donkeys never seem to reach a level of satisfaction, even though they are being fed LOTS!  Probably too much as they are chubby and that's not good.  So what could be going on?  What are they looking for? 
Munch, munch, munch ...

My friend from The Dancing Donkey blog, has been doing a lot of work on exploring her hay test results and setting up spread sheets to try to determine what the deficiencies are in her hay (and mine too - thank you K!)


Hmm ...  we KNOW that donkeys utilize feed differently than horses (more efficiently) and we know that their feed requirements are less than horses, i.e. they can make use of coarser, lower protein hay than can horses and they can eat scruffy bits of browse and find some value in it.

So now the UK Donkey Sanctuary has developed a vitamin/ mineral pellet for donkeys (yay!) ... that we can't get in Canada (boo ...!)   I have compared the feed tags between the UK-produced pellet and the ones I have been feeding (occasionally) but e-Blogger will only let me paste photos, not text files.

Look up http://drreeds.com/formula2.html   - I feed this pelleted form because I don't need to put it into a wet mash, like you do with powdered supplements.

And here is the one developed especially for donkeys in the UK:
http://www.topspec.com/shop/products/topspec-donkey-forage-balancer/  They don't list ingredients but it's a VERY different product with far fewer ingredients from what the feed tag tells me!

And for us, it looks great because it doesn't contain iron or manganese, both of which this year's hay has in excess, and it has added copper and selenium, both of which are deficient in this batch of hay.

I am considering sending the hay test results and the ingredients list from TopSpec (I have written to them for more info)  to someplace (?) that can custom-make a supplement for me - balancing the deficiencies in my hay and leaving out stuff that it has in excess.  It would be very interesting to see if the donkeys respond to having the "correct" balance of vitamins and minerals by balancing out their body-weight!

Having said all this, Dorrie and I went out for a super walk yesterday - exercise is also a high priority!

Hay test results

Here are the laboratory test results for the hay I bought this year.  Complicated stuff to interpret! I've edited out the test results for "Dry" - what you're seeing here are the results for "As Fed."  I didn't test for selenium as there's probably none (this area is very deficient) but the donkeys have a mineral block with selenium added and also get a pelleted mineral/ vitamin now and then.

I have to say I am disappointed in the level of non-structural carbohydrate (NSC) which should be 10% or less for donkeys, and I think the Total Digestible Energy should be a lot lower too.   It's pretty high fiber too but all of my donkeys should be able to handle that, given their ages and good teeth. The low protein level is good though, I think!

With our cool, wet Spring, I was hoping the sugar levels would be lower, since the grass was not stressed, but there are SO many factors and most hay growers around here just cut what grows rather than trying to manage pasture.

This will have to be mixed with barley straw in order to provide enough low energy fiber.

Dr. Burden from the UK Donkey Sanctuary has very kindly looked at these results too and given me her educated view on mineral levels and their ratios as well as the other test results - I am hugely appreciative as there's only so much I am able to glean by looking at the numbers!



MIXED GRASS HAY 15 BALES SAMPLED,  DATE SAMPLED: 2013-07-30


PARAMETER:  AS FED

DRY MATTER
Moisture 8.66
Dry Matter 91.34 

PROTEIN
Crude Protein 5.10
Soluble Crude Protein 41.04
ADF-CP 0.15
UIP ( Bypass Protein) 29.48

FIBRES36.99 % Wet Chemistry
Neutral Detergent Fibre 55.01
Total Digestible Nutrients 54.88

MINERALS
Calcium 0.36
Copper 5.61
Phosphorus 0.16
Potassium 0.83
Sulphur 0.13
Magnesium 0.18
Zinc 18.72
Iron 460.34
Manganese 170.90
Sodium 0.21

CALCULATION
NSC 13.24
NFC 20.73
Relative Feed Value 92.79

OTHER
Starch 2.02
Equine Digestible Energy 2  MCal/Kg
Total Sugar 11.2
ESC = 9.10%

Testing Hay

Yesterday, I tested 15 bales of 2013 hay from the load of 102 bales I just brought in.

Here is a photo of the simple equipment you need:

1. a drill (electric works better than cordless for this)
2. an extension cord so you can reach random hay bales
3. a paper bag that stands open by itself, and, of course
4. a hay probe sampler.  I am able to borrow this every year from the Ministry of Agriculture office. It attaches to the drill and has a clean out rod to push out the sampled hay into the bag.

In the hayloft!  I took samples from the butt ends of 15 bales.

And here's what the samples look like in the bottom of the paper bag. 


Next, I mix it all together, put the whole thing into a zip-lock bag, include a cheque and a submission form, downloaded from the A & L Canada Labs website,and mail via Expresspost!


I like the Comprehensive Equine Forage package as this is the test that will indicate non-structural carbohydrates, protein levels, as well as numerous other components.

Stay tuned for the test results!

Hay Today!

This year, I decided to get hay from the "big" island - that is Vancouver Island.  I really liked the hay I bought there two years ago - it's coarser that I can find here, less seed heads too.  So, up at 5 AM to catch the first ferry off, 40 minute drive, loaded 102 bales and back we came!

I will borrow the core bale sampler from the Ministry of Agriculture and test about 15 bales.  The hay samples go off to a lab in Ontario and the test results will tell me exactly what's in the hay - protein count, starch and sugar levels and ratio of minerals such as calcium, magnesium, copper etc.

With these results, I'll know what I'm feeding and whether or not I need to add minerals or balance the diet in any way.  Fingers crossed I've got the right stuff!

The people who grow this hay have a diabetic horse. Theoretically, any feed that is safe for horses with insulin resistance, diabetes or laminitis should be okay for donkeys!

What I really like about this hay is that there is very little chaff, which can cause impaction.  I think this is partly what happened to Dorica last winter - she gobbled a LOT of barley straw (full of chaff) without drinking enough water - bad combo.

Since then, I have been aware of how much chaff is in many types of grass hay and straw bales.  This hay is long, coarse and from appearances at least, looks pretty good. There is a fair bit of Canary reed grass in it, but hopefully that's okay.  A mule breeder I met last Fall said to me "best thing to feed mules is slough grass!"  By that, I think he means Canary reed grass!  We shall see ...

Barley straw should be baled in another month or so and I'll have to get that from "the big island" also.
The hay loft is pretty stuffed at the moment though as I still had about 40 bales of hay plus 8 bales of straw up there before this new load arrived.

New Feed Trough

As I mentioned in earlier posts, we are planning to be away for 2+ weeks in September.  Filling hay bags can be a bit of a chore, so we thought a feed trough might make things easier for our animal care people.

After scratching my head about this for a few weeks, looking on-line at various troughs, looking through a sheep catalogue, etc., Kris from The Dancing Donkey offered some great design suggestions (thank you!)  and we built it in a day!

Here is it:

Three of the four donkeys took to it right away

We put a length of "non-chewable" PVC pipe along the top and as dividers inside

The trough is 19' long  x 20" wide and the existing fence forms the back

Eventually, I hope to turn it into a slow feeder but that will happen later.

Dorica doesn't like it much and when she gets there, she body-checks everyone else out of the way.  So far I've been keeping barley straw in it and very little hay.  First thing in the morning, I'm putting out hay bags though as I think there would be far too much jostling and anxiety around the trough.  We'll see if I can slowly acclimatize them to using it!

Hay time again

Spent the day cleaning out the hayloft in preparation for the new crop.  I have 34 bales left plus about an equal number of barley straw so that should see us through the next few months.  I never feed freshly baled hay until it's a few months old and then I slowly mix it with the old stuff over a week or two.

The hay elevator is in place (love my hay elevator!) and now I must find the helpers!  I'll get some local island hay but most of it will come from Vancouver Island, about an hour away.  Every single strand has to be covered before they'll let you on the ferry.

Finding the perfect hay for donkeys has proved to be a big challenge.  It should be coarse in texture, low in protein and sugars, not too many seed heads, nicely dried.  Most of this, you really can't tell by looking - the texture and number of seed heads yes, sort of,  but not the protein or other feed values or the level of sugars and starch.  Very few hay farmers are willing to have their hay tested before they sell it off, so it's buyer beware.  But once you have a couple hundred bales stored and you find out it's not what you want ... then what?  The hay buyer's - donkey feeder's dilemma!

Anyway, I look forward to getting the new crop in as there's nothing more satisfying than a full hayloft, except a full woodshed!

OCBA Course Ends, Dorica eats a mushroom and has a birthday + planning for England!

Phew ! It's been a busy time!  So a quick blog post to check in ... the course I have been taking (very intense) in Operant Conditioning Behaviour Analysis is coming to an end this week.  We had submit our final video a few days ago - training a complex chain behaviour.

Rose can now go to the fence, pull a tea towel off, proceed to a set of bells and ring them and come back to me - all on ONE cue.  She's still a bit hesitant and it's my fault for rushing her through a bit.  I'll back up though and make everything fluent again.  Rose has been a joy to work with, although a very different personality from the others.  She is a thoughtful, calm girl and a delightful student!

Needless to say "when it rains it pours!" and that has been truly the case in all ways!  I had work in a 3-day multi-media performance, company for the weekend (clean house, buy food, cook meals, sightseeing) and it has literally been pouring, making it harder to train Rose and video our progress!

Because of the copious amounts of rain, mushrooms have popped up (who would think to look for mushrooms in almost-July?) and while I was chatting with a neighbour, Dorica snatched the cap off one that I didn't see and ate it .... yikes!

Dorrie has been a known gourmet, sometimes to her detriment - I decided to "dilute" any ill-effects of said mushroom and gave her some hay and then a walk around the neighbourhood for some huckleberry shrubs, Oregon grape, etc.  At last check, some 5 hours after consuming the mushroom cap, she seems fine.

Meanwhile, she had her 15th birthday on the summer solstice and I didn't even have time to take her picture.  Must do that though before she gets much older!

With everything else going on,  planning for our 2-week holiday to Britain in September is taking shape!
So many bits and pieces to research but it's all very exciting!

Straw

I am so frustrated by the inconsistency of straw!  The last bale I opened was long tubular and golden - the donkeys don't care for that and most of it became bedding.  

The bale I have just opened is short bits, tons of chaff and awns, dusty and has lots of clumps of soft grey or green matter.  I put it in small mesh hay bags and then shake the bags aggressively so the dirt, chaff and awns fall out - most of them, I hope, but I have to mix it with generous amounts of last's year's coarse hay.

It seems each bale is wildly different (of course it is an organic material) but equally expensive!
At least it's useful in the garden, but there's no way I am able to feed ad lib straw as it's just not a reliable
product.

Thinking About Feeding

After nearly 11 years of owning donkeys, you'd think I'd have a way of doing things, wouldn't you?  But  I'm always reading and things have changed over the years in terms of what's considered important regarding animal husbandry.

Take worming for example.  Not long ago, people thought it was important to give your donkey a dewormer every six weeks, and a different type of drug each time.  Deworm everyone in the herd at the same time.

That's all been rethought - now we are advised to do our own fecal floats at home and not to rotate dewormers too often.  We've also learned that some donkeys may carry a burden of intestinal parasites, but other donkeys in the same herd may have developed more of an immunity.

Okay, so back to feed.  At one time, feeding twice a day was considered okay.  Now we realize that equine can develop ulcers and others problems if they are not eating small amounts of forage frequently.
Donkeys need coarse, low protein, low sugar forage but try to tell them that and they (the donkeys) will protest!

"Oh NO ... we need really good, rich feed at all times!" Plug your ears, sing "la la la la ...." and don't listen!  That's HARD to do!

So now I've got myself into this confusing conundrum.  I work from home, I'm here to listen to all of my donkeys and believe me, the complaints department here works overtime!  However I feed hay and straw four times a day and often small handfuls in between, as well as opening and closing various gates for some grazing time.  It's a full time job and I can NEVER leave home!  That's nuts and I'm needing to find more flexibility.

Enter the slow feeder hay bag!  Ah ha - this is a great invention!  However ... not wanting to park my donkeys in front of a big pile of feed that they will eat all at one time, I still dole it out in 1 lb. offerings.  Still too much management.

I'm looking for a different approach.  How to offer four donkeys (remember there is competition)  small amounts of feed throughout the day and night that they can find (equally,)  get enough exercise and be satisfied without long stretches without any feed.

I now have a collection of sixteen mini hay bags!  Truly!  I LOVE them!  So I'm thinking of dividing their daily ration of hay and straw into eight bags in the morning and then putting out another eight bags in the evening ... that means each donkey would have to "find" two bags to get her rations.  I think this will only work in summer though if it works at all.

Siog would win the hay bag Olympics if there was such a thing.  She manages to extract great gobs of hay in mouthfuls, whereas Dorrie eats slowly and thoughtfully.  Rose is easily dislodged from her bag if someone else wants it and Heather is a force to be reckoned with if she sets her mind on someone else's hay bag. 

The way I'm doing it now has sure made a huge difference to every one's weight though, I have to say.  Rose and Heather have lost their cresty fat pads along their necks, I can actually see hip bones on Heather and everyone is looking great!

But a less labour-intensive method to feeding would be super! Then perhaps I could leave home once in awhile.

Morning Mash

When it comes to feeding donkeys, it seems I am always second-guessing my last decision!
This winter, I had decided not to feed a morning mash - my thinking was that "simpler is better!"
So, no pellets of anything, no processed feed, no GMO products, and nothing that isn't organic.

Then Dorrie had that nasty impaction colic and I "second-guessed" my decision!  And you know how if and when you've ever had food poisoning, somehow your intuition leads you to the culprit?  You just "know" it was the cheese, or the mayonnaise or ...  well, when Dorica coliced, I just "knew" it was the full bale of barley straw I had been putting out in a slow feeder bag, combined with low water intake.

Of course, I can't prove this, but my gut tells me that this was the problem.  Dorrie LOVES her food and perhaps the fact that she had competition from the other donkeys (she's not used to sharing) caused her to overeat. 

The slow feeder bag had 1.5" holes, as compared to their regular hay bags that have 1" holes and it's amazing how much bigger the spacing is!  Too easy to get mouthfuls of straw.  I didn't think they would gorge on straw but I think she did.  Her teeth do need floating and that's another concern, but they're not "bad" enough to cause her to colic, so says the vet.


So in the interests of providing more water in their diet, every donkey gets a morning mash.  You should hear the carrying on while I'm in the feed room getting it ready!  Here's what I do:

In the evening, I put 1/2 cup of soy bean hulls + 1/4 cup of beet pulp + a few Timothy Balance hay cubes in a container and bring it into the house where I add water - I have a line on the container that tells me how much - I guess it's at least 1 cup.  The more water the better but some donkeys don't like to eat a mash that's too sloppy, so you have to fiddle a bit.  I will usually add more warm water in the morning.

When I go out at first light, I take the soaked mash with me and divide it among 4 bowls. 

Then I add:
1 tsp. salt - either sea salt or coarse pink Himalayan salt
1 Tbsp. ground flax seeds - I keep a coffee grinder in the barn and grind every other day
Vitamins/ minerals - either Dr. Reed's pellets or Pure Form for Minis
any other "special needs" e.g Rose is getting a hoof supplement, Dorrie got probiotics for 2 weeks after her colic episode and sometimes I add psyllium if I see diarrhea

Wow!  That's hardly keeping it simple!  Plus, even though I have 2 heated buckets in the barn, I top up smaller buckets with fresh water and boiled water (until it's tepid) and it's been interesting to see that those are the buckets they choose right after eating.

I've just been able to get more Timothy hay pellets (straight hay) and more Timothy Balance cubes (hay + beet pulp + some minerals) so I'm going to switch and use this for the mash and no more soy bean hulls or beet pulp pellets.

So now I'm an advocate for a morning mash - as wet as they'll eat, with salt at the very least, to encourage them to drink more.

Feed & supplements

Over the years I have tried a variety of feed supplements for the donkeys, depending on what I felt they needed.  Deenah needed help with ulcers and was very low in selenium, Siog had frequent diarrhea and I gave her Biosponge and psyllium.  Everyone has had vitamin supplements during the winter months.

Most supplements are in a powdered form and need to be mixed into ... something!  The question is "what?"   My understanding about feeding donkeys is to avoid cereal grains, as they are too rich and contain too much protein.  For that reason, I don't feed oats.  Most of the horse feeds contain molasses and/or oil and numerous "other" unwanted ingredients.  Many of them contain alfalfa - also to be avoided for donkeys.

Today I started everybody on a bit of morning mash.  Into that I mixed a vitamin/ mineral powder and a biotin formula hoof supplement for Rose.  Siog and Dorica each got a teaspoon of psyllium as it's possible they ingested a fair amount of sand during the very dry months we had this summer.

I have also found a mash very useful after dental work.  It's often the case that mouths are tender and sore and the donkeys find hay difficult to chew and grind for a day or so.  As I'm very anxious that they don't go off their feed, I like to have something other than hay to offer.

So I have opted for a mixture of soy bean hulls and beet pulp, but - there are issues with these feeds too!
The soy bean hulls are most certainly genetically modified, likewise the beet pulp and it contains some molasses. But I feel it's the best of the choices available here.

In  a 1 cup measure, I fill 3/4 with soy bean hulls and the rest with beet pulp - add water and soak overnight.  This morning I divided just a portion of that between the four donkeys and added the supplements.  They all loved it.

I would LOVE to hear other ideas about this though from anyone reading this post!  It's far from a perfect solution!

Slow Feeder - full size bag

Today I received my full bale size slow feeder bag from NAG Bags, a Canadian company.  I really like these bags because the webbing is soft and has no knots.  The cord to tie it closed is thick, soft and strong and It seems very safe and easy for the donkeys to access hay and straw.

I have been using the mini size bags for 1 lb. servings of local hay but I thought I'd like to try the full bale size bag for barley straw.  This way I know they will have something to eat all night long - great for long, dark winter nights.

At first, Dorrie commanded the whole bag, shifting her body around so that no one else could get near, but then Siog worked her way in and eventually, they all did.  They ate for three solid hours and then I dragged the bag away - I'm a firm believer in making changes slowly, especially to diet.

I won't leave the bag out overnight tonight but I'll bring it out for them tomorrow again and see how they do.  With the mini size bags, I've been using the ones with small 1" hole spacing.  For this full bale bag I decided to go with the larger hole spacing of 1.5" since I'm using it for straw and not hay.  I figure there will eventually be a limit to the amount of straw they will eat but after watching them today, I could be wrong!

Here they are:

Sudden weather change

Well we went from a gorgeous clear sunny September to being suddenly enveloped in fog, wind and rain!
I am so glad that Rose and Heather had a least a week to settle in before the sudden shift, but I wish it had been longer!

Everyone seems to be getting along and Dorrie is back to being her sweet self.  Siog occasionally chases Rose, like she used to do with Deenah but then she had started that with Dorica when it was just the 2 of them, so perhaps I'm reading her wrong.

My biggest challenge right now is feeding!  I can't wait for everybody to be eating the same hay and to be
comfortable with the slow feeder hay bags.  I am still slowly mixing the hay that Rose and Heather came with, with the local hay I have been feeding. Dorrie & Siog have figured out that there is something sweeter and richer on offer but I don't want them to eat this new hay, so I have to separate the two new donkeys from the 2 old donkeys and it's a bit awkward. But that will change soon, by the end of the week  I think I will have transitioned everybody over.

Heather is catching on to the hay bags really well but not so Rose - and she is the least dominant so easily gets dislodged.  I have to monitor each feeding time to make sure that Rose gets enough.

The type of hay that one puts inside a slow feeder hay net is important too.  You need something coarse that will poke out of the holes, not a soft hay that sits in a clump in the bag, especially as the bag empties.  So I notice that as I add more and more of our local hay, the easier the hay bags are becoming for Rose and Heather to manage!

Right now I have some roofing guys working on the new barn enclosure.  They are installing gutters and flashing so that the entry way won't be a waterfall like it was a few nights ago!

In the meantime, I am offering lots of hay and straw, as these sudden changes in weather can cause some upset.  I want everybody to have lots to eat and be content!

New addition to the barn's breezeway!

Donkey Treats!

Positive reinforcement training (aka clicker training) uses a system where you break down behaviours into small, teachable steps, quickly mark the correct behaviour with a "yes-answer" signal (the click in clicker training) and follow this by rewarding the animal with something they really, really want - in the donkeys' case FOOD!

So, basically it's:  Behaviour = Click = Reward

The question is, what can I use as a food reward that is healthy for donkeys?  And if you are training as much as I do, that means offering quite a bit over the course of a day.

The best things I have found are simple Timothy hay pellets, however they are only sold in the US and not in Canada!  I have been lucky to have had a friend bring me 2 bags awhile back and I got another 2 on my way to Clicker Expo in Portland last year but I am very nearly out of them now.

I have looked at various feed tags on bags of horse feeds but even the best ones are either high fiber, high FAT or else they have a lot of molasses and other unwanted things, like oil.

I could cut up apples and carrots but don't really want to add another task to my list - I want something in the barn that I can quickly fill my treat pouch with.

So I am now wondering if I can make my own donkey treats!  Here's a list of things I feel would be safe and healthy to feed donkeys but I am missing a starch or binder to hold them all together.

carrots (grated),  applesauce, flax "eggs" (which is just flax seed in water), dried nettle or raspberry leaf, mint, a bit of ginger, banana

I'd like to form cookie dough logs that I can bake and then cut into very small pieces.  But I doubt the above concoction would hold together.  The only thing I can think to add is whole oats ground into flour.
I know that some people feed oats to donkeys ... personally I try to avoid cereal grains, but I may need to include them here and hope it's okay.

Any other ideas out there?