BREEDING MULES

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DENNY

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does anyone purposely breed mules.
why i dont know but i always thought that most would be a mistake. but, reading around there is quite a following.
i also thought that breeding from mules was near on impossible, but again read that there is a minute chance of breeding from females. has anyone succeded in doing this,if so do they tend to throw back to the donkey or horse, and what are they breed for mostly theses days. can they be as good as horses in competition or are they better to work with.
 
I don't know of any one breeding in this country but they are very widely bred in Texas. They are supposed to be very sure footed and do not shy so are ideal for trail riding especialy up and down mountain sides.

Baby ones are very cute.

Female mules do cycle and have seasons but I have never heard of one producing a foal. They are sometimes kept as companions to stallions.
 
Someone on here has mules...can't remember her name, she competes hers in Hunter Trials and drives them I think.
 
Have you had a look here ?
http://www.britishmulesociety.org.uk/
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At my old University in California, the top sellers at the annual foal sale from the horse barn were nearly always mules when I was there! Their Mammoth Jack "Action Jackson" was very popular. They were often bought as pack animals, but also used under saddle, and some nice mares went to him--often nicer mares than the AQHA or Arab studs got! Mules are nearly always unable to reproduce, because donkeys and horses have a different number of chromosome pairs (31 vs 32), and the mule is left with 63 chromosomes, which usually prohibits fertility during the development of the oocytes. One of the theories that I've read is that fertile female mules tend to have the full complement of 64 chromosomes (like a mare), and fertile hinnies have 62 (like a donkey), but I don't know how true this has proven. There are very few authenticated cases, though, and I think it would be much easier to have a breeding program based on the old-fashioned way of mule-making.
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I was taught that mules, as other cross-species (as opposed to cross-breed) animals e.g. tigons and ligers, are always infertile. I think mules are lovely and under-valued animals!
 
hi l have a mule he is just over a week old, his mum is a coloured shetland and the donkey is a miniutre.
He is a very bright mule,brown in colour with one white leg and 4 cirlces around his feet.
and he is very handsome and very lively.will post some pics if you are interested.
 
apache11 said:
hi l have a mule he is just over a week old, his mum is a coloured shetland and the donkey is a miniutre.
He is a very bright mule,brown in colour with one white leg and 4 cirlces around his feet.
and he is very handsome and very lively.will post some pics if you are interested.
Click to expand...

That would be interesting, not sure we have had photos of mules in the breeding forum before so you could be the 1st & start a trend.
 
Many years ago I asked Twink Allen about mules, he told me that there were a few that were fertile around the world and that if bred to a horse they would produce a horse but if bred back to a donkey another Mule would result because of the odd chromosome.

Mules are used a lot in the USA and somewhere on my old computer I have a series of pictures of a pack mule on a hunting party killing a mountain lion that had been stalking them, the horses took fright but the mule got stuck in! At the Grand Canyon the trek to the bottom is almost exclusively mules and I have seen pictures of 18hh mules.
 
KarynK said:
Mules are used a lot in the USA and somewhere on my old computer I have a series of pictures of a pack mule on a hunting party killing a mountain lion that had been stalking them, the horses took fright but the mule got stuck in!
Click to expand...

:eek: they need digging out!!! :eek:
 
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