DONKEY WORK FOR
AFRICA
Peta Jones
Should we think about breeding donkeys ? The demand for donkeys is definitely growing in South Africa,
partly stimulated by some neighboring countries trying to source hundreds, if
not thousands, of donkeys to upgrade their farming systems.
This demand from other countries, plus much
of the South African demand, is mainly intent on obtaining a cheap power
source, not much else, and this is certainly what donkeys can provide. But there is another sector showing
interest: those now comfortably affluent, but with memories of a rural
childhood. In their retirement years,
they are returning to a rural life. For
their grandchildren, or for some kind of gentle tourism enterprise, it occurs
to them to look for donkeys.
It is mostly this last group that wants to
know about donkey breeds and the financial aspects of breeding. The brutal truth is that South Africa is a
long way from being able to consider such things where donkeys are concerned.
Why ?
Well, in the first place, the price of donkeys is still too low. At around R500 an animal, this makes a
donkey a wonderful bargain, of course.
As a supreme energy-converter, a donkey consumes a fraction of what an
ox does in terms of food and water, and yet can produce almost as much work on
a daily basis – and go on doing so for almost 40 years (donkey’s years !).
Before it can begin work or even reproduce,
however, a donkey should be three years old (nor should it leave its mother
before 12 months), and by that time an owner has probably invested more than
R500 in its rearing, and may well have become too fond of it to part. In any case, because donkeys form strong
friendships with each other, it is unwise to separate friends.
Which is another aspect of the problem. A donkey is a working animal, and we
humans have trouble putting a value on work.
Look at the way we treat women, for instance. It is also very difficult to specify what makes a good working
animal, and creating emotional stress by separating it from friends will
certainly have a bad effect on its work.
A donkey also works best if it likes and trusts its handler, so the nature
of the buyer is also a factor in the value of a donkey.
Perhaps we should look at the kinds of work
expected of a donkey, specify the traits required, and then do some
selecting. Sounds easy ? It is not.
What work ?
A little crystal-gazing gives us the following roles for donkeys in the
foreseeable future: cultivating, cart-pulling, water collecting (which, like
the rest of what follows, can be accomplished equally well by cart-pulling or
back-loading, but more likely the latter), on-farm tasks such as transport of
produce, manure, building materials, etc., and also cattle herding and fence
patrols – the list is endless, and includes guarding sheep and training other
animals. The important new one is tourism
and, believe it or not, literacy. Donkey-drawn
or –borne libraries are on the increase in countries such as Colombia and
Zimbabwe, and we could do with them here.
Nor should we forget how useful donkeys can be in therapies for the
stressed or disabled, being calm, friendly animals of non-frightening size with
smooth, well co-ordinated movement.
So what do we want a donkey to be ? Strong ?
That we have. Kilogram for
kilogram, there’s nothing stronger than a donkey. And its back seems to be strongest of all. It is not uncommon to see a donkey laden
with goods and a human. Some
famous photographs simply show a huge load with four little donkey legs
beneath, and maybe two ears protruding from the front.
Perhaps we should be looking at a larger size
? But this is not necessarily an
advantage. Small size has the virtue of
being adaptive to poor environments, such as a donkey usually occupies and is
in most ways well adapted to, because that’s where it seems to have evolved. The relative smallness of the donkey has
other advantages: it is less intimidating to women and children, and enables
much easier backloading and hitching to carts.
Even for a tall person, life is easier if he can reach the other side of
an animal simply by bending over it.
Perhaps we are down to the matter of temperament;
and here donkeys are winners again.
Of course there are wide individual
differences, but even horse owners will acknowledge that donkeys are markedly
intelligent, and this makes them surprisingly easy to train. They can learn from observation, and often
do. Their quite undeserved reputation
for ‘stubbornness’ arises through disagreements with humans about what’s best
for a donkey. In fact, the biggest
argument against their being super-intelligent is their apparent willingness to
trust humans, and to work for them.
They seem to prefer work to boredom, but are not on the whole
‘performing’ animals. Applause means
little to them; they just seem to like exercise, preferably at a safe walking
pace.
Donkey specialists in Europe and the USA have
identified some 50 breeds of donkey (although not all the information is in
yet, and many of these are, strictly speaking, ‘types’ and not breeds at
all). Some of the identified breeds are
already extinct or nearly so, including the White Riding Ass bred for the
aristocracy in the Near East, probably from the time of King David, when
donkeys were the proper mounts of kings.
Some more modern breeds, such as the giant, shaggy Poitou Ass, are
actively under rescue. Some were
especially bred for the production of mules.
Even in South Africa there seems to have been a history of importing
suitable donkeys for breeding mules, but that was short-lived. Mules may be wonderful animals, but donkeys
still have the economic advantage, as well as the environmental edge.
The breeds that do exist seem to have
involved – aside from mule production – specific tasks. One of them was use in circuses, so
performance can be teased out of the genes ! Largely, however, they seem to have involved adaptation to cold
conditions, particularly in mountains.
The donkey hoof in any case seems to have evolved in steep, rocky
conditions, and managing loads on precipitous paths is something most donkeys
do as if born to it. Travelling long
distances – and seldom forgetting a route – is another thing on which they seem
to thrive, although it needs noting that a sudden change of environment can
cause adaptation problems to an individual, especially one dependent on wild
vegetation, causing stress and deprivation that can last several years.
It is the use of donkeys on long trading
routes, such as the Silk Road across Asia, that is supposed to account for the
thorough mixing of their genes.
Geneticists – who have only recently looked – find very little
variability between donkey populations, and all contributions from the wild
Asiatic donkeys seem to have disappeared completely. Only two types of donkey from north-east Africa are considered
ancestral to our present animal.
One look at the carved reliefs of donkeys
working in Egypt about 5000 years ago is enough to convince. From early times the donkey has had what it
takes to be useful to humans. There is
still no reason to think of changing this.
Wherever the donkey finds itself, it is there because it has
adapted. It is a balance it would be
unwise to upset, and it could well be that donkeys have become so useful and
survived so well precisely because there has been little interference with
their natural breeding.
ARTICLE
PREPARED FOR THE ‘SA STUD BREEDER/STOETTELER’, October 2005
Peta Jones
Donkey Power Facilitation & Consultancy
PO Box 414
MAKHADO/LOUIS TRICHARDT
0920
South Africa
e-mail [email protected]