# Donkey help...



## tigeresss (Jun 10, 2008)

Hi there!

I'll be upfront in saying that I know very little about donkeys. I've had horses my entire life but don't have too much experience with the donks.

A friend of mine has a donkey and they are having some troubles with him. He's a 21yr old miniature (although I believe his father was a small standard) he is approx. 42-44" tall. He in my opinion is very overweight. Currently they feed him barley (not sure why?) once in the morning and he gets fed 1-2 flakes of hay (depends how big the flakes are) hay twice a day. So that's a total of 2-4flakes per day. The hay is just local hay so nothing fancy. He is cresty and has a big belly.

I was thinking about suggesting that they buy him a mineral block so that he's getting all his minerals and then cut the barley out of his diet. What are your thoughts on this?

He also has a hoof problem. The original farrier retired about five months ago so they have been doing their own trimming the last while. The farrier said he suffered from what they thought was black line disease but I reckon they mean white line disease as I've never heard of black line. Apparently the farrier did something with the feet and it got better. He however has a concern about the donkeys hooves (all four of them). The hooves are a bit soft and on the back of the outside of the hoof it's very soft and a bit squishy. It also has quite a flare to it. On the actual sole of the hoof it appears almost rotten...it flakes away in a white chalky sort of appearance on the outer edges of the hoof. There's quite a few chips in the hoof where it's almost flaked away. The hooves do not smell at all (in a bad sort of way) which sort of surprised me. I was expecting that foul smell you get with thrushy horses. On the sole of the hooves there also appears to be a bit of a bump/ridge just before the outer edge of the hoof wall. He's been lieing down a lot more lately because I reckon he's trying to keep off his feet.

Any information you can provide me with would be great. I've emailed my farrier so that should help but like I said I have little experience with donkeys and all the information on the internet seems to conflict with itself.


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## FlatCreekFarm (Jun 10, 2008)

just bumping this one back up after I finished playing "catch up" on posts! Hope someone can offer some advice for this sweet li'l donkey


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## minimule (Jun 14, 2008)

Could you post some pictures of his feet? That might help a bit. As far as the soft squishy stuff on the back of his feet, that is normal for a donkey. Their "bulbs" are softer than a horses.


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## tigeresss (Jun 16, 2008)

Just thought I would mention I spoke to quite a few professionals (farriers, equine nutritionists etc) about this and they felt he had the beginnings of laminitis. Since my first post we've slowly begun to wean him off of the barley and adventually he will have zero barley in his diet. Interestingly enough apparently barley is one of the worst things you can feed a horse or donkey. It doesn't begin to breakdown until in the large intestine and causes all sort of problems. Something I never knew...I always knew it wasn't great for horses but never knew all of that. Anyway, his diet is being changed and we will continue with proper trimming.




He seems better already!


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