In the United Kingdom, there are thousands of donkeys being cared for by charities; however, little is known about the reasons for relinquishment or their previous health status, with even less information available in published literature.
Such information could help to identify factors contributing to poor equine welfare and guide the development of appropriate educational resources.
The main objective was to describe the characteristics of the relinquished donkeys to better understand the current preventative health care status of donkeys relinquished into The Donkey Sanctuary (TDS). The specific objectives included: the analysis and identification of demographics, reasons of relinquishment, donkey’s preventative health status on arrival, specific areas within the UK where targeted education was most needed, prevalence of specific diseases during isolation, diet provided and husbandry of donkeys by private owners, mortality rate during isolation and investigating if geriatric age is a direct factor for mortality during isolation.
It is a cross-sectional observational survey, using admission data from donkeys relinquished into TDS. A total of 596 donkeys were admitted during a 30-month period. Each had a health check at arrival; previous management information was provided by the owner. Data were retrieved from TDS database, inputted into a specific Microsoft Access 2016 database then exported for analysis in IBM SPSS 19.0 for Windows®.
The typical animal admitted into TDS was an adult donkey gelding seems to differ from that found in small animal shelter admissions. Whilst the percentage of donkey stallions identified in this study was 15.4%. Data regarding the number of stallions entering other equine charities would be helpful to assess if this is a particular problem in donkeys.
Moreover, identifying the reasons why owners are keeping animals entire could provide vital information for the charities to evaluate strategies to help reduce overbreeding and numbers of unwanted equids. Whilst this study looked at the proportion of relinquished donkeys that were entire, it did not look into reasons for not castrating donkeys.
This study identified that there was a large percentage of donkeys that arrived without a valid passport (32.3%) or microchip (49.7%). This has an impact on traceability with regards to welfare law enforcement and the ability to locate equids in the event of a notifiable disease outbreak; it is also very likely that there is an underestimation of donkey population from the CED (Central Equine Database).
The results showed that there was a lower percentage of donkeys that were fully protected against influenza and tetanus (23.3%) (according to manufacturer’s guidelines) in comparison with reported national equine rates (40.0%). Lack of vaccination increase the risk of both, national herd and individuals. Furthermore, it reduces the number of routine veterinary visits and associated assessment of donkey’s welfare and quality of life.
Approximately 35% of the donkeys were in need of anthelmintic treatment with a high burden of Strongylus spp. (no distinction was made between large and small Strongylus spp.), furthermore, although a smaller percentage, some of the donkeys were in need of specific treatment against liver fluke, lungworm, tapeworm and ascarids.
Donkey owners did not report results about faecal worm egg count as a reason for donkeys not having received any de-worming treatment.
This study confirms that geriatric donkeys have a higher risk of suffering moderate to severe dental disease. This indicates that those geriatric donkeys with pathological dental grades were in need of advanced dental treatments, change of dietary management and bedding type and that their quality of life was compromised by painful dental disease. Furthermore, 43.9% of donkeys received no dental treatment within the last year.
This study found that at least 26.3% of donkeys at admission were considered to have a Body Condition Score (BCS) of 4 and 8.6% were identified as obese (BCS=5).
This current study would also suggest that foot care is neglected for donkeys in the UK; only 24.0% of donkeys had been trimmed within 6 weeks of arrival; and 32.5% were seen by the farrier 6-12 weeks prior to admission. The Donkey Sanctuary recommends foot trimming every 6 to 10 weeks for pasture-based UK donkeys.
Main reason for donkey relinquishment was related to owners health (24.2%) and donkey health was given as the third most common reason (11.5%). Reasons for relinquishment given by owners should be assessed to try to reduce unnecessary relinquishments.
The study indicated that owners did not consider dental disease to select donkey diet choice and in fact shows that owners were doing the opposite that would be recommended by TDS. There were more donkeys that had access to chopped feed diets with acceptable dental grades of 1 and 2 (22.6%) while fewer that were on the same feeds had pathological dental grades of 3 to 5 (22.6%). The Donkey Sanctuary recommends chopped forage feeds for donkeys with poor dentition. These finding could also have an impact on donkeys BCS as short chop diet in donkeys with good dentition could help to increase their body weight, and increase the risk of obesity.
The study also indicates that owners are not taking into consideration dental status when selecting type of bedding.
Identifying the right type of diet and bedding for a donkey can be vital especially on those with dental disease and could help to prevent life threatening conditions such as impaction colic and hyperlipaemia.
The study found no association between vaccination status, microchip identification, de-worming, dental frequency, dental grade and hoof conditions and region of origin within the UK which evidences a lack of preventative care across the UK.
To summarise, this study highlights the need for improving preventative health care in donkeys to ensure a better welfare and biosecurity within the UK equine population. This study also demonstrated a deterioration in donkey care when compared with previous publications.
There is an opportunity for veterinary surgeons to engage with donkey owners using evidence based health advice from TDS.