Donkey Behavior: Just Playing or Actually Upset?

In this video, we're going to talk about the difference between being upset and playing, which was asked of me and I thought that was a great question. When we take time just to study our animals, how they act and how they tell each other to move, feeding time is a great time to see where they're actually telling each other to move out of their space. When donkeys are communicating each other, they're going to use their body language, very small things, moving their ears, taking a step towards them, lowering their head, swishing their tails. Kicking or biting is something that can happen also. One thing you'll notice when they're upset, they actually plaster their ears back. The cues that they use to communicate are very, very subtle so they have to watch. They're always watching their masters at this. Ears like that. It's not back there listening. It's a warning, that ear. Now it's up and it's normal. Watch his ears though. See his ears? That's laid back. That's not like a happy donkey. He's saying, stay away from my food. You saw the kick out at him. I'll try to keep getting more video to show the difference between playing and when they're upset but that's a super good question that was asked and it's something I can see better than I can describe so I'm going to keep trying to get more videos to show the difference. See how his ears are just up and relaxed, listening, looking in front of them but as they move around wanting to rotate hay, they all get crabby and wanting to keep each other away from their hay. So their tail is one way. Right before I turn on the camera, Joker was starting to swish his tail and then he quickly moved his hind end over towards Blackjack and that is one sign that's not a play thing. That's them saying, stay out of my space. This is my pile of hay and you can see there's plenty piles of hay in here and they all want to be next to each other. Romeo is just swishing his tail again. Let's see if we can get any more on the recorder. Now here while we're watching, nobody's swishing their tails, nobody's pinning their ears or giving sideways glances at another donkey. Apparently I'm kind of dating myself too by calling it a recorder every time I say that. My husband giggles at me on the camera, on my iPhone. Now they're all being calm. Now you can see when we're watching Blackjack and Romeo playing, their ears are up, they're not pinned and donkeys do play a lot together. So even though Romeo is biting on the neck of Blackjack, Romeo's ears are not pinned back. Their tail is not swishing. Just watching to see other things here. Watching your donkey's body language, lots of different times you'll be able to notice all the little cues that they give. But you see them jumping up there, their ears are completely up and normal. Here their ears and their tail really tell me that they're playing. Here is another example of not playing. Abby comes up and she tilts her head over towards Juliet. She also lowers her head, pins her ears, swishes her tail and steps towards her. So all of these are signs of, I'm not playing around, I want you to move out of my space. And you can see that Juliet did move away from her space. And you can see here also how the ears change on Abby after this all happens.