10/11/2025
When it comes to blanketing, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. The best approach is knowing your donkeys and doing what’s right for them in your unique conditions. Thank you to Hee-Haw Halfway House Donkey Rescue and Education for sharing your thoughtful, experience-based insight!
...that IS "the question"!!
Blanketing is highly contested within the horse world, and there is a lot of misinformation out there. There are even articles on studies that were never conducted! It's hard to know exactly what information to trust.
That's why I always trust my animals. Blanketing will depend on multiple factors. Age, body condition, coat health and condition, the animal's individual tolerance for temperature change, the type and amount of forage I can feed, and, if I already know the donkey, their individual preference.
I tend to blanket in the winter when any of these factors occur:
-Sudden change from warm to very cold weather, especially if precipitation is involved (donkeys, as desert animals, do not have a water resistant layer of fur like a horse and water can trickle down straight to the skin and freeze).
- The donkey is old, thin, or immunocompromised/sick.
-The donkey is showing signs of being cold, like shivering at the flanks or tightly tucking the tail and hunching up the back with head down.
-Cold plus intense wind. Especially if the donkey is scared of or refuses to go into the shelter.
-The donkey hasn't had time to acclimate, whether that is due to a sudden change in temperature or the animal moving from a warmer climate to a colder climate. Or a drier climate to a wetter climate.
The biggest thing with donkeys is the cold plus the wet. Because they don't slick off water the same way that a horse's coat would, they do tend to get wet easier and in cold conditions, they can get much colder. I'll go more readily to blanketing if they tend to have a finer coat or are older or have shown that they dislike the cold and get cold more easily. Just like humans, all animals have a different tolerance to different temperatures.
Another thing to consider is making sure heated water is easily accessible!
