A question about hinnies for my book

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HorseyAuthor

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Hello all!

I have a question to do with the fiction book I'm writing. There is a donkey jenny who I want to have an unexpected hinny foal. She has lived with her owner's stallion for a few years because stallions normally don't show an interest in jennies. My research has shown that the odd stallion here and there is an exception. However, is it unrealistic for the stallion to show an interest all of a sudden?

If he'd been interested from the start they wouldn't have been kept together. I thought perhaps they could have been moved to a new field where there is a lot of mint, which is aphrodisiac, in May or June and the stallion could have eaten a lot of it. Do you think that would make it feasible? He is not a stud stallion, so maybe he could have felt unfulfilled, and the jenny was the only female equine around. What do you think?
 
As well as mares tending to lose hinny foals, it is very unlikely to find mint growing in modern equine pasture. So sorry!
 
Thank you, rabatsa! That could work, but it does raise the question as to why the owner didn't notice the stallion's interest and separate them.


Yes, I had been thinking of it being water mint at a stream. There are also some people who intentionally introduce horse-safe herbs to fields so the horses can seek out what they need when they need it.
 
Juliette de Bairacli Levy (in The Herbal Handbook for Farm and Stable) says it's especially effective for bulls and stallions, so maybe it doesn't work so well for humans. And I've just seen she was referring to the wild water mint, not peppermint or spearmint!
 
I have a plan B for the book, which might work better:

It's not the stallion's foal, although they think it is at first. One day when he was out, another stallion escaped (this is a stud) and bred with the jenny. Someone discovered him in there and removed him, but didn't mention anything – until after the foal is born.

Is that better?
 
Could they have lived in separate but adjacent fields, then moved to a new yard where the fencing wasn't as good? Stallion goes through fence, and voila!

Agree with Equi. I can't think of any circumstances in which the stallion would 'change his mind.' Not mint, which horse owners sometimes use as a supplement to get a fussy horse to eat.
 
The reason for the original lack of interest is because they're different species. Lucy Rees had a story (I think it was in Understanding Your Pony) about her stallion and jenny who were together. The jenny was interested in the stallion, but the stallion wasn't interested in the jenny as anything but a friend.

Equi said:
It entirely depends on your target audience but frankly a stallion is going to stallion, I doubt it would wait a few years for a bit of mint.
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Caol Ila said:
Could they have lived in separate but adjacent fields, then moved to a new yard where the fencing wasn't as good? Stallion goes through fence, and voila!

Agree with Equi. I can't think of any circumstances in which the stallion would 'change his mind.' Not mint, which horse owners sometimes use as a supplement to get a fussy horse to eat.
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I think I will go with an escape. As a student of medical herbalism, I just want to add that the amount of mint added to feed is in much too small a quantity to have a medicinal effect. There would have had to have been a huge amount of water mint in the field that the stallion ate in large quantities over an extended period of time, but even then it was wishful thinking that that would change his mind about the jenny.
 
escape sounds good, he could have gone back without people noticing.

Another idea is if the jenny is old and the breeder doesn't think she can have any more foals. It happened at an arabian horse stud I visited, they put an old broodmare with a stallion as company and the mare had an unexpected foal. The foal was smaller than the others as born later in the season so he went to the weanling field with his dam and was super cute and really confident strutting his stuff with the other weanlings. The breeder told me he was more confident than the others because he had his dam with him.
 
Starzaan said:
As well as mares tending to lose hinny foals, it is very unlikely to find mint growing in modern equine pasture. So sorry!
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Ive got oodles of wild variety mint in my (damp) paddocks, which the horses never ever eat, as i have to top them late summer.
I always thought it strange so many feeds include it when mine refuse to eat it, and they usually eat most everything, so when they leave a plant, i know its really rank to them!
 
PurBee said:
Ive got oodles of wild variety mint in my (damp) paddocks, which the horses never ever eat, as i have to top them late summer.
I always thought it strange so many feeds include it when mine refuse to eat it, and they usually eat most everything, so when they leave a plant, i know its really rank to them!
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Yeah, I dunno... It's actually never worked for me. I just know how it's marketed. Tried it when my old horse got the Veil after going on Prascend and went off her feed. Did f-- all.

Hermosa can be fussy, especially when you sully her feed with certain supplements. Mint did not fix this.
 
rabatsa said:
Some males are shy and people dont notice any action. With some rams sheep get coloured bottoms overnight and no action is seen while people are around.
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That's interesting, rabatsa! It gives me two options, either the plan B I mentioned earlier or a plan C: the stallion living with the Jenny is the sire. They are left together because he never shows interest while there are people around, and because jennies tend to lose hinny foals, it's a while until a foal is born.
PurBee said:
Ive got oodles of wild variety mint in my (damp) paddocks, which the horses never ever eat, as i have to top them late summer.
I always thought it strange so many feeds include it when mine refuse to eat it, and they usually eat most everything, so when they leave a plant, i know its really rank to them!
Click to expand...
The wild mint growing in damp places is water mint (Mentha aquatica), which is stronger than peppermint or spearmint. That's probably why the horses don't eat it. That's useful to know, thank you. The mint in feeds is going to be either peppermint or spearmint. The horses at the rescue centre where I volunteer do eat those two mints, but there isn't water mint there, so I wouldn't know about that one.
Caol Ila said:
Yeah, I dunno... It's actually never worked for me. I just know how it's marketed. Tried it when my old horse got the Veil after going on Prascend and went off her feed. Did f-- all.

Hermosa can be fussy, especially when you sully her feed with certain supplements. Mint did not fix this.
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I guess that's because the mint didn't remove the cause of her lack of appetite or disguise whatever it was she didn't want. She sounds a bit like my cat! If he didn't want something, it was really hard to disguise it so he would eat it, and even if you thought you succeeded it wouldn't work for long.
 
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