North American donkeys

A miniature donkey and a standard donkey, mother and daughter

North American donkeys constitute approximately 0.1% of the worldwide donkey population.[1][a] Donkeys were first transported from Europe to the New World in the fifteenth century during the Second Voyage of Christopher Columbus,[2]: 179  and subsequently spread south and west into the lands that would become México.[3] They first reached (what is now) the United States in the late seventeenth century.[4]: 11  Donkeys arrived in large numbers in the western United States during the gold rushes of the nineteenth century, highly regarded as pack animals and for working in mines and ore-grinding mills.[5] From about 1785, some select larger donkeys were imported from Europe to the eastern part of the continent.[4]: 9 

There are no true-breeding North American donkey breeds.[6] Breed societies in Canada and the United States register donkeys, according to their size, as miniature, standard or mammoth donkeys.[3][7][8] These are reported as breeds to the Domestic Animal Diversity database, a division of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, by the National Animal Germplasm Program (of the Agricultural Research Service of the US Department of Agriculture), as are the burros (Spanish for 'donkey') – a feral population of desert-dwelling donkeys in the southwestern U.S. (mainly Arizona) – and the spotted, a color breed.[9]

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