Notes from Board member Joan Gemme from the 2nd Annual Donkey Symposium at UC Davis, California: Day two was a long and interesting day! The morning lectures on nutrition, hyperlipidemia, laminitis,and besnoitia were followed by a lunch presentation by Ben Hart on how best to approach changing human behaviors. One (unfortunately) common issue that vets and sanctuary personnel have to deal with is telling someone that their donkey is obese and must lose weight. Little success occurs when someone is simply told to do this, and Ben, by explaining some principles of human behavior, presented alternate ways to interact with the owners that would increase the chances of successful weight loss. As always, his lectures are lively and elicit many good laughs! In the afternoon, I went to a parasitology presentation/lab, where I became familiar with preserved specimens of both internal and external donkey parasites and learned to do fecal egg counts. The coolest thing for me was seeing live strongyle larvae--the beasties that hatch from the shed eggs and live on the blades of pasture grass, just waiting to be eaten by our donkeys! We also discussed the best practices of control, number one being removal of all manure from paddocks an pastures (not always practical) and number two, being familiar with and following the 2013 AAEP parasite control guidelines, which we will post separately. When I had my fill of all things creepy, I headed to the barns to watch Ann and Lucy. Ben was rotating through he paddocks and gave a great demo of how to correctly use pressure and release in training animals to lead. Timing, timing, timing! Then we had a quick change into clean clothes and went to the evening dinner and round table discussion on foot care issues, recognition of pain in donkeys, and regional diet issues. It has been wonderful meeting donkey folks from all over our country and abroad and to share information about the ways we care for our animals.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Nov 2014 15:31:52 +0000
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