Kusanar
Loving the herd life
Donkeys can be really weird.
There was a guy down the road from where I used to keep my horses that had sheep and had a donkey in there to guard them. This worked... kind of... he (the donkey) knew HIS sheep and would kill anything that went in the field other than them... including new sheep and newborn lambs. Never touched the ewes that he lived with and claimed as his but everything else was dead.
An old friend of mine had a donkey that had lived with her families goats for years (decades actually), they had 1 Pygmy goat and a handful of Nubians. One year, there was a bad thunderstorm and the Pygmy sheltered under a tree that got hit by lightning and it killed her. The donkey went on a rampage after that. Within 6 months every goat on the property was dead and the donkey was the only thing standing.
When they want to protect they do a REALLY good job, but that also means that if or when they turn on the animals they are supposed to protect, it doesn't take long for them to kill them all.
There was a guy down the road from where I used to keep my horses that had sheep and had a donkey in there to guard them. This worked... kind of... he (the donkey) knew HIS sheep and would kill anything that went in the field other than them... including new sheep and newborn lambs. Never touched the ewes that he lived with and claimed as his but everything else was dead.
An old friend of mine had a donkey that had lived with her families goats for years (decades actually), they had 1 Pygmy goat and a handful of Nubians. One year, there was a bad thunderstorm and the Pygmy sheltered under a tree that got hit by lightning and it killed her. The donkey went on a rampage after that. Within 6 months every goat on the property was dead and the donkey was the only thing standing.
When they want to protect they do a REALLY good job, but that also means that if or when they turn on the animals they are supposed to protect, it doesn't take long for them to kill them all.
