Notes on miniature donkey nutrition

Over the past few years I have had Rafer and Redford on the same balanced diet I feed the horses. They get a very small amount of Ontario Dehy Timothy Balance Cubes (these are totally balanced nutritionally and can be used as a complete feed if necessary) and I balance our hay to insure that copper and zinc are in correct proportion to iron. The diet has been really good for the horses, and the donkeys too look super healthy.

To this I have a custom formulated mix that adds in other things horses are known to need. My seniors get special supplements, as does the PSSM Quarter Horse.

All get loose salt, freshly ground flax, and vitamin E gelcaps added to their feed tubs.

Earlier this year I read a post on an equine nutrition group I’ve been part of since 2008. Someone’s very overweight miniature donkey had blood work done and they found that many of the levels of vitamins and minerals were too high. This donkey had been on a similarly balanced diet as my two.

The donkey’s human took him off all supplements with the intention of starting from a clean slate with blood work to guide her. The donkey lost weight and blood levels returned to normal.

This got me and a few other folks thinking. We know donkeys are extremely thrifty animals. They browse on more than just grass and hay, and sometimes it feels like they don’t need to be fed at all. Maybe we are overdoing it with them, treating them like horses, providing much more than what they really need.

So I put Rafer and Redford on a clean slate diet. Just their bit of soaked cubes AM and PM, and much less hay than what they were getting. We have decent pasture this time of year and they have 24/7 access to it. I decided to see what happened if they were in charge of foraging for almost all of their food.

Remarkably, Rafer (the heavier of the two, with some fat pads evident) lost weight quickly. He trimmed down to a very lovely shape. Redford is very muscular and not as prone to gaining weight as is Rafer, and he too trimmed down, just not as much. I felt awful that I’d been over-supplementing them. They just didn’t need it!

Meanwhile, midsummer, the outsides of their front legs got itchy and formed scabs. At first Redford, then Rafer, and we treated them daily for several weeks getting things under control. Then it occurred to me that the fresh ground flax, salt, and vitamin E were all things that might help the skin thing, so we put them back on those items, carefully measuring the small amount of flax they get each day. Legs cleared right up and we’re back on track.

I thought I was doing the very best for them, only to realize I was doing far too much. Lesson learned. I think it’s worthwhile to revisit what we’re doing diet-wise at least once a year. A friend in the nutrition group takes her horses off all supplements for a month each year in the fall and then carefully monitors to see which horse needs what before carefully adding only what they need back in to their diets. I think this is a good practice!

The busiest place on November Hill: native pollinator garden!

Loving the pollinator garden! All the activity is exactly why I planted it. Here’s a shot from yesterday. There were so many critters flying around me, each finding their favorite native plants to visit.

I’m also excited to report that I’ve enrolled in the NC Botanical Garden’s Native Plant Studies certificate program. I’ll be taking 9 core courses plus a slew of electives over the next couple of years to complete the requirements, and at that point work with an advisor on a capstone project that I’ll implement and present with poster to receive my certificate. 

Watch for updates and more photos as I start this new journey on November Hill. 

November Hill farm journal, 58

I took this photo several weeks ago while waiting for Duke Energy tree crews to arrive and begin the cutting of the trees we negotiated allowing them to take down at the back of our property. What I was aiming to focus in on was the woodpecker who appears as the black thing mid-photo. I had mistakenly done the alarm call for birds thinking it would send them away, but as daughter reminded me later it BRINGS them, so I was suddenly surrounded by birds including two of these huge and gorgeous woodpeckers.

What I now see in the photo is the huge X. In runic tradition, X is Gebo, and generally represents a gift. It’s interesting that I didn’t see this that day as I looked up, but it is so prominent now.

The first day of cutting proceeded. The local Duke supervisor was there and the crews, employees of Burford Tree Services, were contracted by Duke to do the job. There was a bucket truck crew and a tree crew. With the known to us by now Duke supervisor on site I felt things were well in hand, and I told him I’d leave them to do their work. The first day went pretty well. The crews arrived much later than expected and they closed up shop by 4 p.m. so not that much actually got done. (I later learned they supposedly work 4 10-hour days but this is not what we experienced that week)

On the second day around 11 a.m. (they showed up for work around 9:30) I heard yelling, not work-related but like someone was having a party on the back of our farm. The single chainsaw was revving repeatedly, and when I got down to the back to see what was going on, I found huge branches  laying on the fence, the f-word being hurled in all directions, one guy in our tree while four stood on the ground doing nothing. Across the way in two bucket trucks were another five or so workers doing nothing.

I asked where the supervisor was and no one spoke. All the yelling and cursing stopped and even when I repeatedly asked who was in charge, silence. I told the tree crew to get the branches off the fence. No response. At that point I got louder and more commanding and finally one guy got the branches off the fence and another guy, who identified himself as the foreman, walked over. He was surly and unhelpful. I wanted to know why they were making so much noise, why they were not working, and why they thought bellowing the f-word so loud I could hear hear it on my back porch was professional, appropriate work behavior.

Again, no response from the foreman. I called the Duke supervisor who told me his truck was being repaired which was why he wasn’t on site. I told him what was going on and he said he was on the way. I was so upset I called my husband, who came home from work and supervised the back of the farm for the rest of the day, along with the area and regional supervisors from Duke, who later told me there were too many men on the job site with not enough work to do.

We also found trash dumped all over the place by the crews. Duke employees cleaned it up.

On Thursday the supervisor told me the tree crew had been sent home and told if they wanted to come back the following Monday, they would need to come prepared to behave like professionals. The bucket crew worked about a 7-hour day that Thursday, getting most of the trees outside our property line (but adjacent to a section of our fencing) down.

They have never come back. We’ve had rain and I’m not sure if that has made it impossible for them to work but none of what they had planned to do is complete. On one hand, it’s a relief not to have them here, but on another, it’s just dragging this out. We have timber that needs to be stacked and dried for the sawmill guy.

I’m not sure what the gift in all this is, but at the end of the third and final work day that week, the Duke supervisors asked if I could leave the back gate open because there was a very young fawn inside our back fence. With all the chaos back there I’m not sure why or how the fawn ended up there, but at least it was safe! We checked on it after dark and it was still there, so we left the gate open and made a hay trail leading out hoping its mother would come back for it. In the morning it was gone.

Since that week we’ve had peace and quiet and a lot of rain on November Hill. Yesterday we had such a deluge I was out at the barn with shovel and rake shifting water flow by trenching the rain away from the barn. We’re in the midst of doing some work back there anyway to redo some old French drains and put in grids in the barn and shelters, but this was stop-gap work to keep things from flooding near the barn.

The rain is a gift for sure but sometimes when it rains, it pours!

The herd is happy to have a break from the high heat. Yesterday, as the storm blew in, Keil left his double stall and stood in the doorway of the barn, looking out, watching the rain fall. It was peaceful in the barn and one of my favorite places to be when the weather gets a little crazy. For the horses the barn is shelter from the storm and the heat and the biting insects. For me, it’s a different kind of shelter, one that empties my mind of all that’s crazy in the world.

I suppose that is the big gift, right there.

A Handsome Donkey Turns 11

Rafer Johnson is celebrating his 11th birthday today - and in honor of this handsome young man’s special day the entire of November Hill is putting on a show.

Butterflies are soaring, the charm of goldfinches are swooping as one, a pair of male Cardinals are having a mock battle. The second clutch of bluebirds have fledged, thanks to .65 inches of rain a couple of days ago everything is green and growing again.

Looking out the back window I see the tips of Rafer’s ears as he stands in the doorway of the stall he first slept in when he came to live with us. That first night he spent with Cody, teddy bear QH gelding who tends to be very laid back and easy to get along with.

The second night and for the next 7 or so years, Rafer stayed with Salina, his goddess mare, and then young Redford Donkey joined them. That trio were inseparable until Salina passed away at the age of 30.

Since then Rafer has bonded deeply with Apache Moon, our painted pony, and the new trio, Apache, Rafer, and Redford, are a united front and they share the stall on the near to the house side of the barn, their “porch” shelter outside it, and the grass paddock. Of course they all turn out with the big boys but it’s a sweet sight to see Rafer’s ears out the window the way I have for these 11 years.

Rafer remains the same loving, delightful donkey he has always been. On one hand it seems he just arrived yesterday. And on the other it seems he has been with us forever.

Happy happy birthday, sweet Rafer! Enjoy this midsummer day.

Garage area update!

The sun went behind a cloud just as I was taking the photo, and it’s slightly blurry on top of that, but here’s the nearly final result of the garage area update:

The grassy area up near the garage doors will be filled in with gravel. I’m leaving a strip of grass on either side from the retaining walls back. Note the new light fixture, the latest from Barn Light Electric! It matches the door hardware perfectly. As is the front porch fixture, this is wonderful quality and I am so happy with it.

The arbor above the garage doors is the next phase. I’m not sure if that will go up this fall or early next spring. I am reconsidering growing the existing rose over the arbor and thinking of taking the roses out of these beds and rehoming them to a more naturalized area along the fence going up the lane where they can trail along the fence and not require so much pruning to keep them tidy. If we do that, I will likely plant the native coral honeysuckle on either side of the garage doors and see if they grow enough to eventually meet over the garage entry door.

For now, I’m focusing on getting the gravel finished and adding some compost and another layer of mulch to these pollinator beds.

As I’m looking the photo right now as I type, I just imagined a November Hill plaque there by the entry door. We’ll see.

I’m happy to have things shaping up!