The donkey is a herbivores animal but not a ruminant like cow, buffalo and goats etc as it does not chew the cud. It is a monogastric herbivore animal like horses and zebras. Donkey’s gut is suited to consume large amounts of forage such as grass and straw.

Above mentioned ruminants like cows, buffalos and goats have four chambers of rumen or stomachs to enable the process of rumination. But the gut of donkeys do not have such a feature and same is the case with horses and mules.

The main external physical parts of the donkey are the ears, eyes, the mane, nostril, mouth, the leg, the hoof and the tail. Similarly the internal organs of donkey comprise of lungs, Heart, diaphragm, the liver, pancreas, the kidney, the bladder, the cecum and the rectum. The gut of the donkey is remarkably similar to that of the horse. Donkey’s intestine is 24 meters in length and has a capacity of 160 liters. The small intestine occupies 30% of the space of the gut. Very rarely the consumed contents exceed the total capacity of the gut of the donkey.

The hooves of the donkey are tougher than that of horse and hence do not require shoeing and this was the reason why they were used extensively as carriers of burden around the world, especially in rough terrains like hilly tracts. It takes 24 to 35 hours for the fodder consumed by the donkey to get eliminated as feces. Such a large space of the gut of the donkey enables donkeys to retain the extremely fibrous diet of forage that they take to undergo the digestion process in full.

Hence the keepers of donkeys should not take the pot belly looks as a sign of fullness of the stomach of the donkey and deny them the required forage. And ensure ample grazing time to help them maintain their nutrition levels.