Recently Lonnie & I purchased some donkeys that belonged to an estate. The man that owned them had passed away and the task of dispersing of his donkeys fell to his children.

Luckily, the man had used heavy plastic leg bands (see photo) and had numbered each donkey and logged the number of each animal. What would his children have done if he had not identified his donkeys?

Lonnie & I got to thinking about our herd. We have around 90 donkeys. I know all of our donkeys but Lonnie gets some of them confused. What happens if I die??? Our children know some of the donkeys, mainly the jacks. What happens if we both die???

Since they wouldn’t know who was who, the pedigrees would be useless. Even with our records, they wouldn’t know who the foals were out of since they don’t know who the jennets are. Would our donkeys end up going to auction? We have spent a lot of money establishing our herd, as all of you have. It would be a real shame not to recapture some of the original investment just because no one knows which donkey is which?

This summer, Lonnie & I watched a demonstration where two donkeys were micro chipped. It was very easy. The chip was placed under the skin right above and to the front of the left ear with a applicator that look like a toy gun. The donkey didn’t even flinch and it didn’t bleed. No worse than giving a shot.

While this demonstration used the "gun", some microchips are inserted with an applicator that looks like a syringe. Each microchip is packaged in a new sterile syringe. I spoke with a vet and he recommended using a new this rather than the "gun" applicator because of the possibility of spreading diseases especially EIA.

Microchips sell for $10 each while the small pocket readers sell for $250. The microchips already are numbered and have labels with the numbers printed out so you can put them on the donkeys’ registration papers. The readers are battery operated and can be taken out in the pens/pastures to identify the animals. The readers are placed directly over the area where the microchips were inserted and the microchip number will display on the reader.

A friend of ours has used microchips for 3-4 years. Some of his donkeys are kept at another ranch. When it is time to move the donkeys back to his ranch before foaling, his wife prepares a list of names and microchip numbers of the donkeys to be moved. The breeder takes his reader with him to the pasture and identifies the donkeys and brings the correct donkeys back.

There are many scenarios where using microchips can be beneficial. For instance, we could use the microchip number to identify a jennet when she is bred. I heard another story about a breeder that sold a jennet that he thought was due in the fall. Actually, the jennet was due in the summer. He had two jennets that were related and looked alike. When he bred the one he sold, he thought it was the other donkey!