WHAT DO YOU DO WITH A DONKEY?

The answer is LOTS of things!  Donkeys can do just about anything you are patient enough to train them to do.  Though very good at being backyard pets and companion animals, they are also excellent performance and working animals.  Whether you want to ride, drive, pack, work, or just play with your donkeys.... they will excel if trained with patience and  understanding.

Donkeys, or Burros as they are also known, come in all sizes, from minis to standards to mammoth jackstock.  They are very versatile and are well suited for many different types of activities.  Below you will find some ways that folks are enjoying these wonderful animals.

What to do with your donkey.... Burros as Community Volunteers

  The community we live in, Chamita, organized a clean up day. Freighter and Amiga was an integral part of the event.  We attached trash  bags to them on either side and walked on the road picking up trash with the community volunteers.  There were about 25 people and 2 burros from the community cleaning the two roads in the community.  After, we all went to the community center to enjoy a put luck lunch. Great day and successful.  The first photo
is Freighter and Amiga ready for  the mornings activity. The 3rd photo is a group photo of volunteers on the clean up team. The plastic trash bags where placed in cloth laundry bags we bought at Walmart.  Those bags were attached to a stick with rope swung over the pack trees.

Pat and Ron Rundstrom

Water Burro Pack Plans

This ingenious pack set up works just great when you are taking out a group for a hike to see local attractions or on bird watching or work trips, as Pat and Ron Rundstrom do with their burros, Freighter & Amiga.  The water coolers are also a wonderful thing to have in large gatherings of people and the burros really draw a thirsty, appreciative crowd. 

The plywood board was cut in a H shape, 23" long by 19 3/4" wide. The inside cuts are 9 1/4"  long by 61/2" wide.  The board fits inside the saw bucks (This  saw buck was built for Freighter so adjust size for the saw buck they have). We reinforced the width with 2"x4" boards.  We also added a box on top to dispose of paper cone water cups.  The liquid containers are from a restaurant supply house in Santa Fe and Albuquerque has several.
  You see these containers at conferences.  Around the containers we
placed stretch cord and placed the cone drinking cup dispensers on the
outside of the containers. We tied cord on the handles so they can be
slipped over the saw bucks. One of the photos shows the liquid
container top fits under the H board edge.  This locks in the containers.  The spout of the container is toward the front so Freigher can monitor the activity. The board and the container are a balanced load, so the packer has to have people take water from both sides to keep balance. Hope this helps.

Many thanks for sharing these plans go to Pat and Ron Rundstrom who run  Paraje Atajo Guest House in Chamita in Northern New Mexico near Espanola.    Their web site is .... www.trailsrest.com

DONKEYS CAN DO....

Farming, Trail Riding, Driving, Packing

Above - BLM donkeys Blare, Ashley and Rocky -  photo courtesy of Ginny Freeman

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Below - photos courtesy of Mike Storch - standard donkeys, Bodhi and Geezer

on a pack trip into the San Juan Mts. north of Durango, Colo.  

 Donkeys are packed at 75# each

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Robert Auge driving a 4 abreast team of mammoth donkeys skidding a log