I worked on a ranch that did this, but with a slow, nonreactive Belgian gelding. They put a western saddle on the gelding (no stirrups) with a breastplate, and tied the foal to one of the big D-rings where the cinch is attached (quite high up on the Belgian).
They did it that way for 30 years and never had an injured foal. They did have very well trained horses in the end.
I don’t think I would do it with a neck rope, though. That looks like a disaster for the donkey.
QH breeder, TB breeders, Arab breeders and most large operations can not possibly hire 200-600 people to teach each foal to lead by hand. I think it is very ignorant to judge when clearly no one making negative comments breeds this many foals. How many foals die from being caught up on cross ties or need chains for the rest of their lives or just are pushy? Yes there are yahoos in all training but donkeys are not 
To add to this, thinking hand training can teach a foal better than it’s own herd is kinda scary coming from horse people. A foal will learn more from hanging out in a herd, with faster speed and the lessons are something that become more ingrained long term. Teaching a foal to not pull and give to pressure will save years of injury throughout it’s life time. Us 150+ pound humans can never really teach this lesson the way a 900lb ass can. Humans will give in where as donkeys well we all know they never give in
I actually use a similar method to this with my foals, but with their dam and using a Tie-Safe Cross tie (The kind with the Velcro, and then only one side of the Velcro connected with the other side unconnected but back in the rubber keeper) connecting them. My foals understand the leading concept in days. I just use following the dam, instinct to my advantage. They’re connected and one person leads the mare and I lead (guide) the foal. Typically the dam leads the foal around gently and the foal gets the queue to follow (again instinct helps), and if anything does go wrong the crosstie rips easily.
After a couple weeks I don’t need the helper and I can lead the mare by myself, but now with both sides of the Velcro connected. It is an adaption I learned from my family who owns ranches in Montana for the same reasons as Melhorse described above. I always felt that not using ropes and instead using breakaway Velcro ties was far safer. In my mined it was also more gentle and safer to learn leading, following and stopping when they’re young and get these lessons from mom; instead of when they’re just about to be weaned trying to teach haltering and leading. I always just thought I was being safer by letting instincts work for me.
Plus, I’ve never had a problem, not an injury not, not a blink, and my foals learn to lead quickly from mom. Mom pulls forward baby catches up. Mom stops, baby stops. I never even thought anyone would be offended or concerned. I’ve only ever gotten positive feedback about how well behaved and experienced my young stock is.
It is just me and my horses normal. My foals also think loading in to trailers at 8 weeks, old and being bathed, braided, groom and shown. Its our normal.
They used to show WB foals in Europe tied to their dams. Why was it ok for the Europeans but not the ranchers? 
Would I do it? No…
[QUOTE=MuskokaLakesConnemaras;7213754]
They used to show WB foals in Europe tied to their dams. Why was it ok for the Europeans but not the ranchers?
Would I do it? No…[/QUOTE]
Not only that, but I have seen videos from the SRS, showing young stallions attached to one another from halter to halter. As many as six together at a time.
Some people have no idea of what is possible, and what horses are capable of understanding.
It may be effective when you have a large herd of unhandled youngsters, but it does seem a bit barbaric in the world of Sport Horses worth big $$$'s. For those who are hands on with their foals, the practice seems a bit out dated. I wouldn’t risk one of my foals to this practice (or condemn one of my donkeys to child care), but mine are handled from day one and halter breaking has always been a non-issue.
I’ve never done it myself but saw it employed at a QH ranch. The foal and donkey both had stout leather collars that were padded and attached by a relatively short(?3-4’?) piece of rope. The donkeys wouldn’t set back when the foals pulled them around but would keep circling the foal to get it to move wherever the donkey wanted to go. The donkeys were very kind and patient with the foals and knew that they would eventually get the foals to do what they wanted. The foal grew to accept the leadership of the donkeys to the point where they just did everything together. These were very expensive QH foals that no one would risk injuring.
While I considered it for my warmbloods I decided that the different in size would be to great and that it didn’t make sense to feed another animal all year for 2-4 weeks of work. We’ve developed other ways of getting foals to lead that are not trauma tic for foal or handler and seem to work well.
Like I mentioned above, at a racehorse conference I met a fellow who did the donkey lead system with his TB’s, which are probably more valuable than the average WB. Also, if a second handler is necessary for a system, then it defeats the purpose of the donkey - which is to get a lot of horses well handled to lead without using a lot of staff. I know it works well for the large ranches, and for smaller operations, well, up to them…so many of us have horses that are born and handled daily from birth, so leading, tying, loading, etc is not an issue. A wise old donkey can certainly lend a hand.
Taking a young foal (~4 months as in the one here), and tying them hard and fast to something fixed (donkey or wall or whatever) is never OK and is not a training tool. It is stressful and unnecessarily risking injury to their neck if nothing else, and a royal PITA for the donkey. Watching them flip out and pull back and fall and laugh about it is not an example of sound training.
Go to a top farm, like a Lane’s End or Claiborne or Adena Springs where they foal out 100+ mares and year and show me the donkeys they use to teach them to lead.
I have seen this method go wrong and have zero use for it. We can do better.
Agree with CrowneDragon. If you don’t have time to halter train your foals, maybe you’re producing too many foals.
[QUOTE=crosscreeksh;7215605]
It may be effective when you have a large herd of unhandled youngsters, but it does seem a bit barbaric in the world of Sport Horses worth big $$$'s. For those who are hands on with their foals, the practice seems a bit out dated. I wouldn’t risk one of my foals to this practice (or condemn one of my donkeys to child care), but mine are handled from day one and halter breaking has always been a non-issue.[/QUOTE]
Ummmm… apparently QHs are not big $$$ horses? I’ve been on reining farms that do this with all their young horses, in addition to daily handling. And we’re talking $30k+ yearlings so I’m not sure where it’s unacceptable for people to do it with sport horses. A horse doesn’t know what it’s supposed to be.
If I had a good donkey I’d do this with my sport horse filly that’s had hands on her daily from the time she was born. Why? Because a herd environment can teach them more than I can in the 15 minutes I have to keep their attention. I’ve even threatened to hook her up to my QH gelding but I don’t want to do that to him.
[QUOTE=SouthernYankee;7228806]
If I had a good donkey I’d do this [/QUOTE]
I do have a good donkey. That’s why I can’t imagine doing this to him.
[QUOTE=Cindyg;7229249]
I do have a good donkey. That’s why I can’t imagine doing this to him.[/QUOTE]
The necking donkey we had loved working with the weanlings - if they don’t like the weanlings we didn’t use them. He was worth his weight in gold. And yes, we handled those cheap QH foals from day one. If by cheap, you mean WP weanlings that started at $25K in price.
We also taught all of our yearlings to hobble. gasp
It is a divided issue - each to their own, but the big K establishments have lots of staff, high overhead and don’t compare to the average TB breeder just trying to make a living off his racehorse operation. I know it is a successful
system, and not interested in making a case for it, or care if anybody is not for it — no need to dis it, though.
[QUOTE=CrowneDragon;7228412]
Taking a young foal (~4 months as in the one here), and tying them hard and fast to something fixed (donkey or wall or whatever) is never OK and is not a training tool. It is stressful and unnecessarily risking injury to their neck if nothing else, and a royal PITA for the donkey. Watching them flip out and pull back and fall and laugh about it is not an example of sound training.
Go to a top farm, like a Lane’s End or Claiborne or Adena Springs where they foal out 100+ mares and year and show me the donkeys they use to teach them to lead.
I have seen this method go wrong and have zero use for it. We can do better.[/QUOTE]
I was unable to view the original pics, but saw the ones posted from the ranch. I have never heard of this method, but I think it makes alot of sense. In the pics the “foals” are taller than the donks for heavens sake! If I was going to feel sorry for anyone, it’d be the donk. And a donk is not a “fixed” object. They have legs and can move…which is really the point.
Besides, I’m guessing there is an entry period, were the weanling spend loose time with the donk, so they bond, then they are attached.
I do a similar thing except without the donk. My babies start by having a short rope (2ft) attached to their halter for hours at a time while they can go in their stall and a very safe paddock (and only while I’m home and can see them) after a week or so of that, we graduate to a longer rope – very stiff so it can’t wrap on a leg – and it’s long enough to drag by the front legs but not the back.
Baby will step on it from time to time, and they get used to it swaying against their legs or dragging beside them. This is especially important and something few people think about. But I watched one horse pull away with a lead line on and just go nuts when it started flipping around his legs as he ran. Luckily, nothing happened to that one, but a friend of mine lost one of her prize Teke colt (a yearling) when HE broke away and the dragging rope freaked him out so bad he blasted right into a post and broke his neck. So they MUST be used to that.
Sometimes mom steps on it and they learn to just take a chill pill (usually if baby starts freaking mom moves off the rope in afew minutes).
Afew weeks of this and they already have the “give to pressure” idea down, and I (an old lady w/2 fake hips) can go from there.
Again, you can’t blame a method because the people using it are idiots. Sounds like the ones on FB were/are idiots. But there are stupid people in all areas of training. It sounds like it could be a very effective method done right and with the right donk.
If I had more babies per year & the right team of donks AND someone to teach me exactly how they do it safely and kindly, I’d give it whirl…even with my expensive WBs.
I’ve always used the drag rope on my babies so that they taught themselves how to give to pressure. And go from there to actual leading/halterbreaking. (And, since I drag a 75 foot hose around to water, no horse raised here has ever paniced over the ‘big snake’ under foot!) No matter what method is employed good sense needs to be used. I’m not going to employ enything that yanks/pulls on a very young foal. But they grow strong quickly and after weaning, well, the methods talked about above all have some merrit.
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