When Diane Parnell woke up one morning to find 25 sheep dead at her Hunter Valley property, she was devastated.
Wild dogs had been lingering for years but the attack that night was the worst.
“They just ran them down, killed them, didn’t eat them, didn’t tear them to bits or anything — it’s just a sport for them.”
Ms Parnell would wake up at night to check the sheep, she invested in cameras to monitor them and even tried alpacas to keep the dogs away.
“And the dogs got the alpacas.”
The savior was an animal perhaps known best for its stubborn nature, but donkeys have an incredible ability to bond with other livestock and protect them from predators.
“She’s lovely… [the sheep] just follow her like she’s their mum,” Ms Parnell said of her donkey.
“If I hear anything I’ll go out at night with the torch, but I’m more relieved because I’ve been out here at night when there’s a fox around and she’s got the sheep all herded together, watching them.”
Worth their weight in gold
Quiet donkeys like Ms Parnell’s are hard to find in New South Wales.
Hers came from the Last Stop Donkey Program (LSDP), a Hunter Valley charity working to handle and rehome feral donkeys as guardians.
LSDP founder Brooke Purvis said she knew there had to be something more that could be done with donkeys after learning the extent of how they were culled in outback Australia.
“Out on stations, the donkeys really are classified as feral because they’re taking up prime livestock feed; for farmers they’re of no value and to muster them is pretty interesting, so there are a lot of costs there in mustering.
“They’re too handy to be shot.”
So Ms Purvis began learning how to break in donkeys and support local farmers to find their confidence again.
“There was a lot of sheep farming going back a generation or so and a lot of people went out of that due to stock losses,” she said.
“They’re just soul-destroyed and they’re not confident and the donkeys have brought that back.
“Through lambing and calving they’re really worth their weight in gold.
“If something comes into their paddock, they’re quite territorial and they actually go towards the danger instead of running away, so if a dog does come in to attack, a donkey just stomps it or runs it off.”
Back to school for everyone
The Last Stop Donkey Program took shape at St Catherine’s Catholic College in Singleton, where agriculture students were a key part of training the once-feral animals.
“We made the assumption that the donkeys were probably quite similar to breaking in cattle, so we just applied that sort of learning and it was just … no,” agriculture teacher Joanna Towers said.
“So it was just learning on the job and just gaining an appreciation for their personalities and how they like to be treated, that whole reward system.”
Student Jacob Merrick often can’t believe how far the donkeys have come.
“They were feral,” he said.
“They’d come straight out of the Northern Territory, no human contact, been mustered in helicopters, quads; they’ve never had facilities like at St Catherine’s, so it’s really different for them and different for me.
“I’m quite impressed, quite proud I guess of what we’ve achieved.”
Jaslin Boyd worked alongside the initial team and she and Jacob have become a crucial part of the LSDP outside of school.
“At the start I really had no clue what to expect, but now they’re completely different to anything I’ve worked with,” Jaslin said.
“They have their days off or when they want to work with you and when they don’t, but we just work around that.
“They love to play. They surprised me… from being wild donkeys to now quiet donkeys who will come up to you for pats and cuddles.”
Lessons linger beyond the farmgate
The LSDP team quickly learned that gaining the donkeys’ trust was one of the most important things.
Most farmers considering donkeys worry they don’t know how to care for them, which Ms Purvis said was why she started doing training days too.
“The donkeys’ welfare has to be taken into account because we do hear a lot of stories where farmers just turn them out in the paddock with their sheep, and their teeth, feet, all of that is ignored.”
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