evaluation of breeding animals

Background

The Austrian Hungarian White Baroque Donkey is Austrians only official approved donkey breed. End of 2016 the studbook and the related breeding standard, which was prepared together by the Society and the breeding federation Stadl Paura, were proved and legitimated by the responsible Animal Breeding Council.

The officially responsible department for the breed Austrian Hungarian White Baroque Donkey is the breeding federation Stadl Paura in Upper Austria. This applies also for Baroque Donkeys in Germany. For Switzerland the approval is in preparation.

The Society for the Preservation of White Baroque Donkeys is contact for all practical questions and expertise concerning the Baroque Donkey, supports breeder and keeper, pushs on new (scientific) projects concerning the Baroque Donkey and is lobbyist for this breed.

Breeding standard and linear evaluation

The breeding standard regulates how a Baroque Donkey should look like. It also regulates in which category of studbook a donkey belongs. “Paper doesn’t blush” and so it was a further project of the Society to revive the theory. Because it is important, that all Baroque Donkeys who breed, comply with those standards and this needs to be checked. This check is done by linear evaluation of the donkeys.

Linear evaluation means: if you see a filled in evaluation form of a Baroque Donkey, you should be able to visualize the described animal.

Evaluation committee

Soon the Society realized that a central evaluation, like with horse breeds, makes no sense for the widespread population of Baroque Donkeys (the Society has members and donkey keeper in 5 European countries). For this reason, a mobile evaluation committee was installed. The group of persons who evaluate consists of 10 persons from 3 countries. On the one hand it was necessary to have enough persons to cope with the wide range of the animals and on the other hand to have as few as possible to guarantee the most equal evaluation as accurately possible. All evaluators have years of experience in keeping and breeding donkeys.

The next step was the equal training of the committee, so there was a training in October 2017 in Schloss Hof. After theory lessons in horse evaluation the committee together with Peter Zechner, director of the breeding federation Stadl Paura, measured and evaluated all 13 local animals (evaluated are only adult, mature animals that are 3 years old or older).

In the meanwhile, the evaluation committee is working independently and has evaluated 90 breeding animals, 22 stallions and 68 mares (status quo: 24.10.2021). The aim for the next years is to have evaluated all breeding animals.

Genetic typing

Additionally to linear evaluation, hair samples are taken from the breeding animals for genetic typing. So lineage of the foals can be checked if necessary.

When recording for the Equidae passport the vet should also take a hair sample and send it together with the Equidae passport form to the breeding federation Stadl Paura. Passport and genetic typing together costs 60 Euro.