Donkey’s diet
General principles
The main principles you need to consider to understand a donkey’s diet are:
- Donkeys are “continuos foraging” animals. They have a particular strong food-seeking behavior.
- Donkeys are “mixed feeders”, meaning that, a part from grazing, they like to browse for tasty leaves and branches in trees, shrubs, and hedgerows.
The fact that they continuosly forage implies that their main feeds should be low in energy (to avoid excess of calories) and high in fiber (to satisfy the appetite).
Main diet
Most healthy, adult donkeys only really need to eat straw plus a little hay/haylage or grass and a vitamin and mineral supplement. Straw should make up the majority of the diet, approx. 75% in the summer and 50% in the winter. Vitamin and mineral supplements may take the form of a forage balancer, or a mineral lick.
Hay is dried grass that is baled at approximately 85-90% dry matter. Haylage is also made from dried grass, but instead of being allowed to dry out as much as hay it is semi-dried (50-70% dry matter) and then baled and wrapped in plastic (which makes some fermenting process to happen). It is important to limite energy-rich feeds (hay, haylage, grass).
Any supplementary feeds should be high in fibre, low in calories, and suitable for laminitics.
Branches are very reach in fibre.
Treats
As always treats are feeds that the donkey enjoys particularly. Of course, the enojment is highly correlated with the energy-content of the feed. The best treats are does energy-rich feeds that the donkey may found in its natural environment: chopped apples, carrots, bananas, or high-fibre nuts. You should feed no more than a handful of treat feeds per day. You should avoid artificial sugary treats.
Alternatively (an probably less effectively), you could treat a donkey by exploiting is passion for browsing. You can give it branches to look for tasty leaves. However, you should know that some plants are not safe for him.
Finally, maybe the beast “treat” is just grass. Grass is energy-rich with respect to the straw that they mainly eat, so it is probably already a treat for them.
Still to be organized
However, you should avoid allowing donkeys to consume any plant that you cannot positively identify as safe. Avoid sycamore, and trees which bear berries and fruits. No Prunus species (plum, cherry, almond).
Donkeys don’t need as much grazing as you might imagine, and depending on the type of pasture you have a one-acre paddock should be sufficient for two donkeys to provide year-round exercise and limited grass. Grazing should be considered an addition to straw, with straw making up the bulk of the diet. Donkeys given unrestricted access to grass are highly likely to become overweight and are at an increased risk of developing laminitis due to the relatively high level of sugars in grass.
There are a few ways that you can keep a record of your donkey’s size and weight without having to use weigh scales. Body condition scoring (BCS) or condition scoring (CS) is a way of assessing body fat coverage both visually and ‘hands on’. Taking heart girth measurements involves measuring the donkey’s circumference around the area where a girth would go (just behind the front legs), this measurement can be recorded and repeated to look for any change in size around the middle. Heart girth measurements can be particularly useful when used in conjunction with a height measurement as you can calculate an approximate weight from the two measurements. Keeping an objective record of your donkey’s body condition, heart girth and approximate weight every month is useful if you are monitoring their weight, or once or twice a year if their weight is stable.
Here at The Donkey Sanctuary, we do not advocate the use of grazing muzzles on donkeys. Aside from fitting difficulties due to donkeys’ differently shaped heads, we have found that grazing muzzles are not an effective method of reducing a donkey’s grass intake. Donkeys are very adept problem solvers and are more likely to be able to get out of the grazing muzzle than horses and ponies. Another risk when using a grazing muzzle with donkeys is that they may become depressed due to the restriction imposed on them and give up trying to eat through the muzzle. This could lead to the development of hyperlipaemia (a life-threatening condition caused by a negative energy balance - see our Hyperlipaemia in donkeys page. Grazing muzzles also interfere with behaviours other than eating including social interactions such as grooming. There is also the potential risk of permanent damage to the teeth occurring with the use of some grazing muzzles, due to the abnormal abrasion caused from the muzzle itself. Due to these overwhelming factors we strongly advise against the use of grazing muzzles in all donkeys.
Health issues
Donkeys are prone to obesity and laminitis.
References
- https://www.thedonkeysanctuary.org.uk/for-owners/owners-resources/feeding-donkeys