Sometimes you sit on tantalizing facts or records of events, hoping you have the opportunity to insert them into something larger you are writing, and it never happens. I’ve tried fitting them in before. Later, rereading the piece, it’s apparent the tantalizing bit is awkward. Out of place. Forced. Reluctantly I take them out. They are good little things, but they fit nowhere, and end up hidden somewhere on the hard drive, unused, not worthy of a whole story to hold them. Like this.
After the United States won its independence from England and George Washington was named the country’s first president, the King of Spain sent him a mammoth jack as a present. A mammoth jack is a male donkey which is 14 hands or more tall. Political leaders, and everyone else for that matter, were closer to the land and appreciated agriculture and animal husbandry more then I’m sure, even kings and presidents. It is said that George Washington was immensely pleased, and put that jack to work breeding and creating both more giant donkeys and lots of really big and terrific mules. The DNA of that single mammoth jack can still be found in many of the donkeys, mules, and yes jackasses, of which there are many, in America to this day.
I learned this on a bus in Peru from a woman in California who keeps and breeds both horses and mules, and have been thinking about it ever since. She had taken a quick side trip to a Peruvian ranch where she saw that country’s signature gaited horse, the little Paso. That’s how we got on the subject. I thought it was fascinating. Having a nugget of a story like that is the equivalent of money burning a hole in your pocket. I know it’s trivial but I can’t help but tell you about it.
A mammoth jack 14 hands tall measures 4’8” at the shoulder. Most donkeys are pretty little, like Mexican burros whose rider’s legs nearly touch the ground, and nimble little donkeys strung together and used as pack animals. But 4’8” at the shoulder is a big ass donkey. I know that’s redundant but I couldn’t resist. What you have, if you possess a mammoth jack like George Washington did, is the potential to breed him with big horses and by doing so creating gigantic strong mules. Go to the Illinois State Fair, or better yet the Missouri State Fair, and you will see some really big mules which are the product of mammoth jacks and Belgian horses.
Belgians if you don’t know are big draft horses originally bred to pull plows and wagons as are Percherons and Clydesdales. Thanks to Budweiser everyone knows the Clydesdales from Scotland. They should be thankful they have that nice white feathered hair around their hooves, which make them superstars. Percherons and Belgians and others are equally big and strong. Of course now that farmers have tractors we rarely need horses like that, and keep them around for old time’s sake. Draft horses, which used to be the heavy lifters as it were on farms and in cities, are now pretty much a hobby, as are mules.
Back to the mules. Mules are the unnatural product of two species whose chromosomes don’t line up and who don’t breed on their own; those being a male or jack ass (donkey), and a female or mare horse. As an unnatural offspring mules themselves are sterile, unable to reproduce. Male mules are castrated, or gelded, to make them more docile, and female mules lack the anatomy to conceive and give birth. But jack donkeys and mare horses, that’s another story. Mule breeders make it happen. And it’s not easy. Even the mammoth jacks need help impregnating those big Belgian mares. Think well placed ditch which lowers the mare, or platform of some kind that raises the jack. Of course with artificial insemination, those worries are over. I was on the farm when we made the transition from Jersey dairy bulls and cows doing it naturally and artificial insemination which is something else entirely. But that’s another story.
If you go the other way on this equation, breed a jennet donkey to a stallion, the product of their union is a hinny. Hinnies, which you would think would be roughly equivalent to mules, are lower class and undesirable. Usually mistakes. Sometimes unethical breeders try to pass hinnies off as mules. How or why this whole hinny business is a problem I don’t know. You would think they would be roughly the same as a mule. But it is. I do know that as a practical matter, if you were a little jennet donkey you wouldn’t want give birth to a big horse headed hinny. On the flip side mare horses deliver the baby mule foals fairly easily.
Remember this whole business was not intended to be. Think genetically modified animals. Hinnies are sterile too by the way.
After we started inseminating our Jersey dairy cows artificially Dad decided to use Angus sperm with one of the bigger cows once a year to get better beef for the family when we butchered.
“Why just Angus Dad? Why not breed her to a Hereford or Charolais?” After all, we had catalogs with pictures of bulls, page after page of them. The world was our oyster so to speak when it came to animal husbandry. A whole new world of possibility had opened up.
“Have you seen the big heads on those Herefords and Charolais? Once in a while you have to think of the cow David. Would you want to push out a calf with a head like that?” Dad was a sensitive guy.
So why breed mules? Good question. I’m told that mules work hard. They combine the best attributes of donkeys and horses. My Dad had some experience with mules although his Dad farmed with horses as did he in his early years. He said mules were used more down South because they worked well in the heat. You could work a horse to death, and when you did it was usually from heat exhaustion. Horses don’t know when to stop. Working a horse to death was a disgrace. Not only do you lose the value of the animal, you were considered by your peers not only cruel but ignorant of your horse’s needs. Once in a while an old horse would drop dead during hard work understandably but work a young horse to death and you would never live it down. Mules on the other hand will stop when they get too hot. Refuse to work. Dad figured that cliché “stubborn as a mule” should be changed to “smart as a mule.” When they refused to budge it was often for good reason.
Nowadays mules are being bred not primarily as work animals but in all sorts of ways for different purposes. Breed a small jack to a pony and you get a great little mule for a young child. Breed a Mammoth or a regular jack with a quarter horse say, and you get an animal that is fast, a pleasure to ride, nimble on its feet, and can jump well. I know nothing about breeding mules but I do know about the donkey/quarter horse mule first hand.
We were camping on a family vacation years ago among the beautiful red rock and hoodoos of Bryce Canyon in Utah. We’d been hiking on the trails and the kids wanted to go further down on one of the long lines of mules they rented for that purpose. My wife, scared to death but wanting our kids to have the experience, insisted I go on the trail ride with them.
“Honey, they have rules for the mules,” I told her. “Riders can’t be more than 200 pounds.”
“Well you’re not that much over 200 are you?”
“Heck yeah I am.”
“Tell them you’re 200 anyway. The kids want to go and I want you to go with them. It scares me.”
Being dutiful, yet doubting I could pull it off, I approached the mule ride people to purchase tickets.
“Two kids, one adult.”
The cowboy in charge, hat, chaps and all, looked me over carefully. “Would that adult be you?”
“Yeah,” I said boldly.
“If you don’t mind my asking, just how much do you weigh?”
“Right around 200.”
“You wouldn’t mind stepping on this scale would you pardner?” He had a bathroom scale under the table which he slid out with one pointy cowboy boot. “It’s a safety thing for the mules you know. We have some big mules but even they can only haul so much up and down those steep trails. It’s about them keeping their footing.”
I stepped on the scale hopefully, but clocked in at 239.
“No offense sir, but I’ll just be selling you the children’s tickets. And if you’re worried about your kids, the young cowboys we got working this summer haven’t lost one yet.”
I went back and reported my failure to the wife.
“Well then they can’t go. I’m not letting them go down there without us.”
“Then you’ll have to go.”
“I can’t do that.” She looked at me as if I’d lost my mind.
“Look, either they go without us or they don’t go. Trust the people running the trail ride.”
She nodded but I could see fear in her eyes.
That afternoon we reported to the corral with our tickets and watched as they began saddling up the mules. They were sleek nice looking mules of all colors and sizes. My son was the smallest kid on the trip, and they gave him a short dapple gray mule that looked terrifically bored. My daughter was on top of a dark, almost black mule, a little bigger, with very long ears and a little more spirit. My wife was anxious. One young cowboy could tell. He came over just to talk to her.
“Ma’am, we have three riders, lead, middle and rear, that control the string of mules. The mules know the way better than us. They do it twice a day, they’re sure footed, and gentle as lambs. Your kids will be near the rear and our cowboy back there will keep a close eye on them and their mules. You have nothing to worry about.”
When everybody was mounted up they formed the line and began making their way out of the corral and off to the canyon. Our kids smiled and waved. As the line was disappearing out of sight over a little rise at the canyon’s rim my son turned in his saddle and waved one more time. My wife and I waved back.
After the last mule went out of sight my wife broke down with huge loud shoulder shaking sobs. Letting go can be difficult. I held her until she stopped crying.
So there you have it: mammoth jacks, the King of Spain, mules, George Washington, hinnies, the pain of letting go, the whole ball of wax. Ball of wax? Why do we say that? You never know what you’ll learn next, do you?
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