Why We Adopted Miniature Donkeys: Fun Facts, Our Herd & More

Well friends, our homestead and family just grew by four sweet souls! This week we welcomed home four miniature donkeys (or dinky donks as I’ve grown to call them): Winnie, Sugar, Cookie, and Bean Sprout. They are incredibly sweet, adorable, and silly; we love them so much already! We’ve officially caught “long ear fever”.

Read along to learn fun facts about miniature donkeys, meet our herd, hear their adoption backstory, and why we chose to get them the first place. I’ve also shared the steps we took to fix up and prepare our property and old barn for the donkeys. The last few weeks have been an absolute whirlwind getting ready for their arrival!

UPDATE: Interested in raising miniature donkeys yourself? Come see our beginner’s guide on caring for mini donkeys for important details about cost, feed, grooming, veterinary needs, space requirements, and more.

Disclosure: Homestead and Chill is reader-supported. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. 

Why Miniature Donkeys?

Our miniature donkeys are primarily companions for us, but there are a few other awesome benefits of having them around too.

As soon as we moved to our “new” homestead (coming up on three years ago now!) I assumed farm animals of some sort would be part of our future. Our property has a great fenced paddock area, weedy pasture, and modest old 2-stall horse barn basically ready to go. (The previous owners kept a couple horses and a goat on that 1-acre portion of the property.) Yet adopting farm animals wasn’t necessarily on the top of our priority list for the first few years here. I also wasn’t sure which farm animals would be the best fit for us.

We briefly considered goats, but their reputation as escape artists and garden destroyers didn’t exactly get me feeling all warm and fuzzy about that idea. Alpacas are hella cute, but also hella expensive – and a bit moody, apparently. Plus, both goats and alpacas (or sheep) would need protection from predators. 

Enter: mini donkeys! Mini donkeys are like the best combination of a dog and horse. They are sweet and affectionate like dogs, even more smart and lower maintenance than horses (less expensive and less prone to health issues), and much easier to contain than goats – especially minis.

Even better, they keep coyotes and other predators away! Full size donkeys can even kill coyotes, and minis will bite, kick, and generally deter them. They’ll also help keep our weeds down, and we can use their manure to make stellar compost for the garden.

The Adoption Backstory

In late November, I saw a couple adorable young mini donkeys on our local Facebook. I half-heartedly joked with Aaron that we should get them, though we definitely weren’t ready to jump into that kind of commitment on a whim. Their average lifespan is 33 years after all! BUT it did tickle my interest, hard. The more I looked into mini donkeys, the more I knew they’d be a wonderful fit for our homestead. 

Serendipitously, I learned that there is a local rescue farm (Seein’ Spots Farm) about 45 minutes away from our house! The owner has a huge heart and takes in mini donkeys from kill pens or when owners can no longer care for them. The farm is also home to unwanted or neglected chickens, goats, horses, barn cats, old shelter dogs, pigs, bunnies, and a tortoise.

On December 1st we went to the farm to meet some of the available donkeys. We were tentatively interested in adopting just two, but ended up falling in love with four (two bonded pairs): one older pair who are 15 and 16 years old, and one younger pair that are about 4 years old.

The next few days were a total emotional rollercoaster mixed with very little sleep. Are we really doing this? Should we get all four? Perhaps just two is a better fit to start? What about the gardens, the cats, the quail…? Or going out of town? We went from wanting all four to none to deciding on just two and then back to four within about 72 hours. 🤣 But we are both SO happy with our final decision to bring home all of them. 

After all, we have ample space, needed to do a TON of work to prepare our property whether it was 2 or 4, and (most importantly) donkeys are social herd animals and should not be alone. So while it is more mouths to feed and poop to scoop, we figured the more the merrier! Now if something happens to one of them, or if one needs to be away for some reason (like a trip to the vet), then the others won’t be lonely. As sad as it sounds, it’s always good to prepare for the worst case scenario.

Miniature Donkey Facts

• They live a long time – up to 40 years or older! The average lifespan for a miniature donkey is about 27 to 33 years.
  
  
• Donkeys are very social creatures. They thrive in herds and typically have one special buddy they’re most close to, also known as a bonded pair. So, it’s important for your donkey to have friends! They may also bond with a horse or other animals, but do love a fellow donkey around if possible.
  
  
• Miniature donkeys are their own distinct species. Their small size is natural, and not a selectively bred-down version of a larger donkey (unlike most other miniatures).
  
  
• At the tallest, mini donkeys can be up to 36 inches tall or less, measured from the ground to their withers (or the area on where their back meets the base of their neck). Our girls range from 30 to 33 inches tall. 
  
  
• Miniature donkeys weigh 250-350 pounds on average. Some can be more petite (our Bean Sprout is closer to 200 lbs) while others can weigh up to 450 pounds.

Mini donkey facts continued…

• Donkeys are territorial and protective. Unless raised together, they generally don’t like dogs since they’re related to their closest natural enemy: coyotes. Full-size donkeys can and do kill coyotes, so they are often used by farmers as livestock guardians. Mini donkeys aren’t quite as voracious, but will fend off and keep coyotes away! Unlike goats, sheep, and other similar farm animals, mini donkeys don’t need predator protection – they are the protection! Our minis will help keep our property more safe for our chickens and cats too.
  

• Mini donkeys like to poop in piles. This means you can also train them to go in a particular spot by moving their manure there, making it extra easy for clean up and compost time!
  
  
• Donkey’s nap standing up, but lay down for a deeper sleep. They take little snoozes off and on throughout the day, but only sleep for about 5 hours total over 24 hours. Only 30 to 45 minutes of that needs to be deep REM sleep!
  
  
• Donkey’s originate from the deserts and savannas of North Africa, Egypt, and the Arabian Peninsula. Since they’re native to desert environments, their diet and metabolism is designed to subsist on little, dry, low-nutrient food. It’s important to carefully monitor your donkey’s diet, access to forage, and limit treats as they’re easily prone to getting overweight (which can lead to metabolic issues).

Meet Our Herd

Our herd of mini donkeys includes Sugar, Cookie, Winnie and Bean Sprout. They are so sweet, beautiful, quiet and calm… except when they get the zoomies! Overall, they’re such good donkeys. They are quickly warming up to us and all like to be pet, scratched, brushed, and hugged. They don’t show any interest in toys yet.

We’d heard that female donkeys (jennets) were less rowdy than males (jacks), so that’s what we were most interested in adopting, though we were open to a good gelded male-female pair too. We feel so blessed to have scooped up our four ladies.

Sugar already knew her name, so we kept hers as-is while renaming the others. Sugar (16) and Cookie (15) are the older bonded pair. They’re also a bit taller and larger than the younger two. Winnie and Bean Sprout are the smaller gray gals, and are both about 4 years old. 

Their Backstories

Winnie was surrendered by her previous owner who could no longer care for her. We’re unsure of the details, but she seems to be the most needy for affection and food. Bean Sprout was saved from a kill pen auction, so she’s the most skittish of the bunch but still very sweet and mellow considering her past. Both arrived at the rescue farm about 2 years ago, which gave them time to bond together and also be better trained there. 

Sugar and Cookie had been at the rescue farm since they were little. They participated in the farm’s various fundraising events and open farm days, so they’re very well-trained and accustomed to people. It turns out Sugar even appeared on the Ellen Show as part of a feature about the farm many years ago! Check out the picture below.

Though Sugar and Cookie were a beloved part of the farm for a very long time, the rescue owner knew it was time for them to move on to their forever home where they could live out their years with even more attention and space. It was an emotional goodbye for everyone, but she knew they were going to the perfect new home where they would be very well-loved and cared for. 

Preparing Our Property for Mini Donkeys

Though we already had a small barn and fenced horse pasture on our property, there was a LOT of work and modifications to be done before the donkeys came home! Much of the existing fencing was designed for horses, not mini donkeys, who can slip under or between things more easily. Plus, we’d just landscaped a big beautiful orchard area that we had to fence off to protect! Not to mention all the supplies we needed to get together. Thankfully the farm agreed to give us a few weeks to prepare. So, we made a “donkey do-list” and got to work!

Barn Makeover

Having an existing horse barn on our property was a huge asset. However, it was in pretty rough shape and needed a lot of TLC to get ready for our donkey girls. So we got to work scooping out old manure and bedding, pulled out and cleaned the stall mats, and removed rusted out water fixtures. I dusted off the cobwebs, sprayed down and shop-vacced the walls, and got it all ready to paint. 

Painting the interior of the barn wasn’t totally necessary, but it made the space so much more bright, clean, and welcoming! Apparently equines are more likely to go into a well-lit space too, so that’s an added bonus. See the before and after photos below. We also replaced the leaking shut-off valves and re-routed some of the water lines for a new automatic water trough.

Fencing

Once we decided to adopt the donks, coming up with a good fencing plan was one of my major sources of stress at first! We wanted to equally prioritize the donkey’s safety and happiness, as well as protect our garden spaces, keep certain areas off-limits to remain lush for wildlife, and still provide easy access around the property for our cats and small wild critters. Mini donkeys are best contained with heavy-duty (12 to 14 gauge) 2×4″ no-climb wire fencing, at least 3 to 4 feet high.

Here is the fencing plan we came up with:

• Rather than keeping the donkeys confined to the existing paddock only, we wanted to give them free reign of as much space as possible – nearly an acre of the far side of the property. However, we also wanted to be able to close the girls into the paddock area on occasion when needed, so we had to add wire fencing all around it to close the large gaps.
  
  
• Since acorns are toxic to equine, we decided to fence off the densest oak areas on that side of the property. This will also protect the area that our wild California quail friends use for nesting and habitat, and ensure a few corners of the property stay dense and wild for critters in general. 
  
  
• In order to ensure the cats, quail, and other small wildlife can freely move around the property, almost all of the new fencing we added has a 6 to 9 inch gap at the bottom above the ground – which is apparently best practice for the donkeys too!
  
  
• Finally, we installed 5 new gates at key locations for us to easily access the newly fenced areas.

All in all, we ended up installing over 700 feet of wire no-climb fencing before the donkeys arrived! Nearly 400 feet on new t-posts around the orchard and “quail side”, and another 350+ around the perimeter of the paddock.

The First Week Home

The donkeys are settling in very nicely in their new home! We’re spending as much time as possible outside getting to know one another. I see more of their unique and quirky personalities emerging as they become more comfortable every day.

In addition to all the excitement and bonding time, one of my favorite simple moments was when we were harvesting in the garden, and I looked over and could see the four of them peacefully napping in the pasture on the other side of the property. I also love seeing them run happily around their new big space. The dinky donks really make our homestead feel complete!

Our new daily routine consists of donkey breakfast and poo pickup first thing (we just built a big 3-bay compost system to help manage their manure). Then we come back for mid-morning brushing and cuddles, plus an afternoon visit where I’m learning how to check and pick their hooves while haltered. A farrier will come every few months for deeper hoof trimming. Then it’s evening dinner time. Overall, mini donkeys are fairly easy keepers.

So that’s what’s new on the homestead! We’re so happy to give these sweet girls a loving forever home, and I hope you enjoyed learning more about them too. Be ready to see more of them in our posts to come! It’s about to be a very busy spring here – we’re also getting over a dozen new baby chicks! Thank you for tuning in and helping welcome the dinky donks to the Homestead and Chill family. Please feel free to say hi or ask any questions in the comments below.

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