Miniature Donkey

The Miniature Donkey comes from Sicily and Sardinia, where donkeys of this size have been worked for more than two thousand years. They turned grist mills, hauled ore out of mines, carried firewood and delivered bread, doing it in country and in streets too tight for anything larger.

The American population starts with one shipment. In 1929 Robert Green imported six jennets and one jack, and nearly every miniature donkey in the United States descends from that import and the few that followed.

The irony is where they now stand. The breed is close to gone in its native islands and imports are difficult, so the North American herd is a large part of what is left of it.

They are kept as companions now rather than for work, and they are good at it: long-lived, sociable, and easy around children when handled properly.

That is exactly where buyers get caught out. A miniature donkey is livestock, not a pet with a shorter feed bill. It needs hoof care on a schedule, another donkey for company, and grazing kept deliberately poor, because rich pasture founders them.