Earlier today I reacted to a BBC news post about councils in South Wales banning donkey rides on beaches. I reacted badly. Not because I was wrong about the facts, but because I didn’t explain them well enough. This is me putting that right.
I’m a donkey owner. So when I see a headline about banning beach donkeys, framed as a welfare victory, I want to push back. Not out of stubbornness, but because the argument being made, that removing donkeys from beaches protects them, gets the welfare question almost entirely backwards.
Where Donkeys Actually Come From
Donkeys were brought to Britain by Roman legions around two thousand years ago. They arrived as working animals, bred for arid, hot climates, with no evolutionary relationship to cold, wet, temperate weather. They have been here ever since, domesticated and deeply woven into British life, but the climate has never particularly suited them.
This matters because it shapes everything about how a donkey needs to be kept.
Unlike horses, donkeys do not have a waterproof coat. Their fur lacks the protective grease that sheds rain. A wet donkey is soaked to the skin within minutes, which causes rapid heat loss, stress, and a genuine risk of pneumonia. Their hooves, designed for hard, dry ground, soften quickly in wet conditions, leading to painful infections including thrush, white line disease, and abscesses. And because they evolved to survive on sparse, low-nutrient vegetation, the lush wet grass of a British field is, for a donkey, closer to a health hazard than a treat. Too much of it causes obesity and a potentially fatal condition called laminitis.
A responsible donkey keeper in the UK provides a dry yard. Sand, gravel, or paving. Shelter from rain. Limited access to grass. The wet British countryside, however green and pleasant, is not what a donkey’s body is built for.
What a Beach Actually Offers
Dry sand is close to ideal ground for a donkey. It is firm, dry, and kind to hooves. It does not hold moisture the way grass does. It does not harbour the mud related skin conditions that wet fields produce. For a donkey owner managing an animal that cannot simply be turned out into a field and left, a sandy beach in dry weather is genuinely good for the animal.
The Donkey Sanctuary, which has been working on donkey welfare for over fifty years, publishes guidance for working donkeys that makes this clear. Welfare is not about removing work. It is about ensuring the work is appropriate, the conditions are right, and the animal’s needs are understood.
Beach donkeys in the UK operate under strict welfare standards. In Blackpool, for example, there are weight limits for riders, mandatory rest periods, and an annual period of time off. These are not token measures. They reflect a serious understanding of what donkeys need and what they can comfortably do.
What Donkeys Actually Enjoy
Donkeys are not passive animals. They are intelligent, curious, and social. They notice things. They form attachments. They have preferences. Anyone who has spent time around them knows that a bored donkey in a wet field is not a contented animal. Donkeys generally do better with a purpose, provided the work matches their nature.
Beyond beach rides, donkeys in the UK work in care homes and schools, providing therapeutic companionship that is well documented in its effects on the people they visit. They are used as livestock guardians, their protective instincts making them effective at keeping sheep safe. They graze specific areas for conservation purposes. These are not roles that cause suffering. They are roles that suit an animal built for purposeful, social engagement.
The donkeys being led along a beach on a summer afternoon, stopping to let a child pat their nose, are not being exploited. They are doing something that suits their temperament, on ground that suits their hooves, in conditions that are better for their health than the alternative.
The Argument That Gets It Wrong
Banning beach donkeys does not send them to a better life. It sends them back to a wet field, which is precisely the environment that causes the welfare problems their owners work hard to prevent.
The councils making these decisions may be well intentioned. But good intentions and good outcomes are not the same thing. A welfare argument that ignores the basic biology of the animal it is trying to protect is not a welfare argument. It is a sentiment dressed up as one.
Donkeys have been part of British seaside life for well over a century. The people who keep them, in the main, understand their needs far better than a planning committee does. The answer to any genuine welfare concerns is better enforcement of existing standards, not a blanket ban that mistakes visibility for harm.
Leave the donkeys on the beach. It is, for them, one of the better places to be.
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