Bad Donkey Behavior

[cakadu]

I am seeking some advice from some of you long time donkey owners. I saw some terrible behavior from the donkey - twice this week and I have no idea what to do about it.

To my absolute horror she picked up an hours old lamb and shook it up and down and then proceeded to drop it onto the ground when I yelled at her to quit. Unfortunately, I couldn't get over the fence fast enough to do anything but yell.

What can we do about this behavior? As she is just coming up on 2 is this something that she will never outgrow now or is this some sort of aberration? Should we be sending her down the road? I will not tolerate this sort of behavior from anything so am at a real loss to understand what is going on here. Is there a way to reprimand her to get her to stop?

The lamb is fine and mom is not too happy, but there was no real damage done that I could tell anyway.

Thanks for your help.
Linda

[topper]

I hate to tell you this but this is exactly the behavior that made me get rid of my guard donkeys. The same attitute that makes them ideal for guard work also makes them hard on new borns. I caught my donkeys doing the exact same thing that you discribe. I even suspected that a few of the unexplained newborn deaths where caused by the donkeys. I guess they just don't like anything strange coming into their pasture and that sometimes includes new borns.

[topper]

Linda, I can't give you any advise on this one. My donkeys are never with the newborn calves, but are fine with the two or three week old calves if they are ever in the same pen.
Is this the first time your donkey has been around the newborn lambs ? Makes me think that the donkey thinks the newborns are an intruder and that explains the behavior.

[cakadu]

I believe that this is the first time she has been around newborn lambs. She is fine with the older lambs, it has just been the two newborns.

I will ask the lady we got her from if the donkey was ever around newborns, but I don't believe that she was.

So from a reprimand point of view there is nothing that can be done? I suppose it's not like training a dog is it.

It does seem strange because when the first lambs started arriving in February, she was with them and actually keeping the mom from tending to them, so to see this shift now is quite puzzling indeed.

She is so good in every other aspect that I would hate to see her go. Maybe what we will have to do is put her in with the rams while the lambs are being born and then let her out once lambing is finished. That way she will just be around older lambs, which by all indications she doesn't bother with at all. We've never seen her do anything to lambs that are more than a week old. She was actually sleeping with a bunch of them around her, so there can't be much of a problem there.

[cakadu]

Likely a good idea to separate her until these new lambs are all on the ground. She may think that the new ones are foreign to the rest of the herd but it sure does seem strange. I wonder if she is in heat and that is causing the agressive behavior.

[cakadu]

Now that may be something - never really thought about that - the heat thing. How long are they in heat for and how often will they cycle?

This isn't something that we see regularly by any stretch - at least we've not SEEN her do it all that often.

Topper, was it something that you saw on a regular basis and how long did it go on for before you got rid of your donkeys?

[topper]

I just noticed the behavior when the calves where a day old or so. The Jack was worse than the Jenny but I never really thought about heat cycles. It's hard to think straight when you see your (guard) donkey pick up a day old calf by the scuff of the neck and shake the heck out of it. The reason I got the donkeys in the first place was because the coyotes where taking the odd new born calf so I figured if I couldn't trust them with the calves at calving time then they where of no use around here. Maybe with sheep it would be different as I imagine even older lambs would be targets for the coyotes. I never saw them being rough with older animals. It was always the new borns that where being roughed up. Hope this helps you.

[Cedar]

"So from a reprimand point of view there is nothing that can be done? I suppose it's not like training a dog is it. "

No, I suppose not, and I am not a donkey owner, however, I wonder if you have considered trying the following: Hit her in the butt with a pellet gun (not the pointy pellets, of course) when she displays this undesirable behaviour. It's best, of course, if one could stay out of view during this process, then she'll just think the act of picking up the new lamb is causing her the "pain in the butt"!!!!! If you decided to try this, please let us know if you have any success with it, thanks.

[redcountry]

last year the community pasture installed a guard donkey in one of their pastures we had some august calving cows in that pasture
the first cow to calve had twins the next morning they were both dead the positions looked like they had been throwin around , we thought the cow had been routing them trying to get them up.
the next cow calved and i cought the donkey shaking the hell out of it , i now feel that the "guard" done the killing.
we brought the donkey back later in the year and he tried to herd some calves away from their mothers until a mother laid a beating on him ,he never touched another calf.
you got a cow that is very protective?one that would give him the attutide adjustment he needs

[redcountry]

heck, any old limo cow would hang a lickin' on a donkey or anything that threatened her baby, although one of my minis booted a snotty cow between the eyes one day when she tried to chase them away from the feed, mind you she didn't have a newborn calf at that point.

[kato]

We've never had this problem with the donkeys and calves. We had a jack a few years ago that would chase newborn calves a bit, but when we got a couple of jennies he totally lost interest and never bothered them again. I guess he had better things to do! Since then, the donkeys stay in the pens with the calving cows, even the jack, and there has never been a problem.

I would keep her away from the newborns. Did she do it when the lamb was still wet? Maybe it smelled "off", and that triggered her reaction. Can you keep her in a pen next to the lambing sheep so she can see them through the fence? Maybe in time she'll figure it out that these 'little wet things' are sheep too.

As for teaching her not to do it, I don't think that's possible. Just try and set things up so there is no opportunity for incidents like this. As she gets older and more experienced, hopefully she'll see the light.

[cakadu]

Sadly Topper sheep of any size are fair game for coyotes. There is that old slogan "Eat lamb 10,000 coyotes can't be wrong."

Some of the ewes are very protective and will put the run on our dogs, so much so that the dogs almost look like bull riders who are continually on the lookout for that mad bull. Unfortunately, the donkey is a standard, so even if the ewes were to take a run at her, they would more or less go underneath of her, unless they got her in the legs or something like that.

kato, the one lamb wasn't too old at all and it's navel was still wet, so that is maybe something as well. I hope that as she matures she is better, but we'll just have to make sure that for now she isn't in the situation anymore. She hasn't done it since I first posted, so maybe she is being kept occupied by going out and grazing with the flock.

Thanks for your help.