Ethiopia has approximately 10.80 million donkeys, the largest population in Africa and the second largest in the world. Nearly 47% of the country’s total donkey population is male and nearly 0.61% (65,282) are found in Sidama regional state (1). These donkeys, particularly the male ones, play a significant role as draft power and transport for goods in rural, peri-urban, and urban areas throughout the year (2, 3). According to the report of Admasu and Shiferaw (4), approximately 56% of donkeys are kept mainly for pack services (to generate income and for homestead use), 26% for cart use (to generate income), 14% for pack use but exclusively for homestead use, and 4% exclusively for renting, breeding, or petty trade.

Poor infrastructure and very rugged topography in many parts of rural Ethiopia and many other developing countries have made transportation by vehicle inaccessible. Hence, people in rural and peri-urban areas rely on equines to transport crops, fuel wood, water, and people by cart or on their backs from farms and/or markets to homes. The donkey is one of the most important equine draught animals, playing a key role in the agricultural economy (5). As the beast of burden, donkeys are good vehicles and will remain the main means of transport in the mountainous and rugged landscapes of Low-Middle income countries, where motor road construction is difficult (6) and where households are poorly resourced (7, 8).

Compared to horses, donkeys are assumed to be hardy; hence, they often engage in work for long hours without proper management, which in turn negatively affects their health, welfare, and quality of life. Moreover, donkeys in Ethiopia are the most neglected animals due to low social status (9). This was partly justified by the low number of sick donkeys presented annually to the veterinary clinics compared to other domestic animals (10). The prevailing misuse and mistreatment of donkeys and the lack of veterinary care for donkeys have contributed enormously to early death and work life expectancy of 4–6 years. However, in countries where animal welfare is in practice, the life expectancy of donkeys reaches up to 30 years (11).

Owing to the prolonged and strenuous work they carry out and the little attention they receive (low social status), donkeys in developing countries are subjected to a variety of health and welfare problems, including back sores and other wounds, lameness, colic, parasitosis, and various infectious diseases such as tetanus, strangle, epizootic lymphangitis, etc. (12–15). Apart from these, there are several other interacting factors affecting the welfare outcomes of working equids (16), the majority of which can be improved through community awareness creation.

Since the beginning of 1994, three foreign non-governmental organizations, namely, The Donkey Sanctuary, SPANA, and Brooke Ethiopia, have been intensively working in the country to improve the health and welfare of equines by launching outreach treatment centers and community-based intervention approaches. The outreach treatment approach was to directly provide the health and veterinary services and provide some material support, whereas the community-based approach was to develop the capacity of the community to improve the welfare of their donkeys by keeping their donkeys healthy, preventing wounding and lameness through education and training, supporting veterinary services, and training farriers and pack saddle and harness makers. Community-based interventions also include promoting practices such as wound management, eye cleaning, watering, feeding, grooming, and hoof picking and discouraging practices like beating and overloading through the training of change agents (elementary school children, teachers, and voluntary community champions for equine welfare).

Brooke Ethiopia and The Donkey Sanctuary focused primarily on working donkeys through the provision of treatment for sick donkeys and different harness materials, better carts, and implements for resource-poor owners, as an outreach treatment approach. However, in the latter stage, both non-governmental organizations adopted community-based approaches/interventions whereby change agents (model equine owner/users) and school children receive tailored training and education to work jointly with these non-governmental organizations as an advocacy group and/or concomitantly transfer their skills and knowledge to peers, which then widely trickles down to other equine owners or users of the area (17, 18).

Although very few studies have been conducted to assess the welfare of working equines (8, 19–23) and to compare the effectiveness of different knowledge-transfer interventions for rural working equid users (24), information is lacking on the impact of the interventions made so far on the community regarding the improvement of the health and welfare of working donkeys in Ethiopia. Therefore, the study aims to assess the impact of community-based interventions on improving donkeys’ health and welfare status.

In this study, it was revealed that the prevalence of wounds and lameness were significantly higher (p < 0.05) in non-intervention areas compared to intervention areas. Moreover, the majority of wounded donkeys in the non-intervention areas had more moderate to severe wounds compared to donkeys in the intervention areas. Likewise, severe lameness cases (Grade 3 and above) were also observed in donkeys in the non-intervention areas. Based on the Mann–Whitney U test, there was a statistically significant difference (p < 0.01) in the scores of lameness and wounds between the two groups, with higher scores being observed in the nonintervention areas. The difference observed in the prevalence and severity of wounds and lameness in the two areas may be due to various reasons, but the level of awareness regarding animal welfare and husbandry practice is at the forefront. Training of change agents to promote good practices (such as wound management, eye cleaning, watering, feeding, grooming, and hoof picking) and discouraging bad practices (like beating and overloading) positively changed the level of awareness and, thus, the welfare and health of the donkeys in the intervention areas. In this regard, overloading, ruthless beating, poor or improper harnessing, prolonged and improper hobbling, and overworking are usually incriminated as the causes of wounds and lameness, both in cart pulling and pack donkeys (33–37), which emanate from poor awareness of the welfare of the donkeys and the associated working animal management. Loading of hot flour from milling houses and other heavy goods on the back of pack donkeys without a saddle or with a thin saddle was also associated with back sores by the farmers in the study area. In line with this, Yilma et al. (10) and Sells et al. (30) relate pack wounds of working donkeys primarily to harnesses and load-bearing packs.

Wounds on working equines are usually developed due to poorly designed and ill-fitted harnesses, tail straps, and saddles (14). Most of the straps used in the non-intervention areas were made of strips from car tires, which cut into the skin of the equines and form large open wounds. Such wounds were seen on a greater scale in non-intervention areas compared to intervention areas, which is due to the awareness creation work implemented by non-governmental organizations. In this regard, the authors noted that fabric straps were a dominant harnessing material used in the intervention areas. Moreover, the customary use of dry sticks to beat the hindquarters and prick the tail base of a working donkey in the non-intervention areas can partly explain the greater prevalence of lesions on these parts of the body, which is in line with the findings of Pritchard et al. (15).

Donkeys in the intervention areas had moderate to good body condition scores compared to those living in non-intervention areas. Although the causes of this difference can be multi-factorial, donkeys in the intervention areas probably received better management and care, including regular deworming, sufficient feed and water, and adequate rest during and after work. Apart from its direct implication on the level of management and welfare, the body condition score can be a potential risk factor for the subsequent occurrence of wounds, which is higher in non-intervention areas compared to intervention areas. This finding is similar to Sells et al. (30), who described equines with a low body condition score as possibly having less natural padding that can protect them from pressure, friction, and shear lesions caused by harnesses. Furthermore, this is in line with Pritchard et al. (15), who identified the highest correlation coefficient (r = 0.37) between low body condition score and wounds in the skin and deeper tissues. From this point, it can be concluded that better working management of working equids is a basic requirement to establish or maintain good welfare standards.

Based on the behavioral assessments made, significant numbers of donkeys in the non-intervention areas were dull (32%) and difficult to catch (33.5%). This could be partly explained by the higher proportion of donkeys with poor body condition and the higher prevalence of wounds and lameness caused by overwork in these donkeys (38, 39). On the contrary, most donkeys in the intervention areas were alert (82.5%) and friendly (78.5%), indicating better behavior in their social life and interaction with humans. Unlike other behavioral tests, alertness and friendliness when approached are positive good welfare measures (15). According to Ali et al. (39), the human-equine relationship is critical to equines’ care and has implications for their psychological status. Poor welfare, which is reflected in the donkey as dullness (apathy), can be interpreted by the owner as laziness; thus, such donkeys are more likely to be beaten and suffer from chronic fear (40). Likewise, fearful and aggressive behaviors are also known to provoke a negative human reaction as owners become angry or annoyed. Therefore, animals displaying these behaviors are often exposed to adverse handling procedures because they react inappropriately to handling (41). The difference in the prevalence of wounds and lameness observed between the two study areas, as discussed above, could also emanate from the difference in the behavior of the donkeys.

Although coughing, continuous lacrimation, colic, neurologic signs, and urogenital tract complications were observed in donkeys in both areas, higher proportions of these signs were recorded in the non-intervention areas. Similarly, studies conducted earlier (24, 42–46) also indicated that respiratory problems, colic, and ocular problems were among the most prevalent health problems encountered in donkeys in Ethiopia. Moreover, Stringer et al. (14) and Berhanu et al. (27) indicated that urogenital complications are among the top 10 health problems in working donkeys in the country. Unlike lameness and wounds, significant differences were not observed in the prevalence of other health problems between the intervention and non-intervention areas.

Since work is often the only productive output of a donkey, the care given to donkeys that are unable to work properly is still unsatisfactory, both in the intervention and non-intervention areas. To bring about significant change, owners should be aware that donkeys free from injuries and any ailments can live longer and be more productive. The lower prevalence and severity of wounds and lameness, good body condition score, and positive behavior of the donkeys in the intervention areas were assumed to be due to the training provided on working animal management and the improvements to harnessing material advocated by The Donkey Sanctuary-Ethiopia. In line with this, a questionnaire survey carried out a decade ago to assess the impact of The Donkey Sanctuary on resource-poor donkey owners revealed that their donkeys were significantly healthier and more productive and, therefore, the owners were able to generate more money because of the intervention (44). A similar study conducted in West Kenya (47) using animal-based welfare assessment methods proved that non-governmental organizations had made a positive impact on donkey welfare through owner education. However, to benefit from community education or extension programs for the owners and users of equids, the knowledge transfer method should be properly designed and piloted according to the intended group (24).

The overall result of this study indicated that donkeys in non-intervention areas were experiencing multiple health, management, and welfare problems compared to the intervention areas. Based on the current findings, the contributions of non-governmental organizations through education programs for owners and training for vets, farriers, and allied professions are promising in the improvement of the welfare and health of working donkeys. A comprehensive and continuous equine health and welfare promotion program should be designed, introduced in the veterinary curricula, and implemented, preferably using a community-based approach to generate sustainable improvement in the welfare of working donkeys in developing countries like Ethiopia.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Before the commencement of the study, ethical approval was obtained from the Institutional Review and Ethical Board of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Hawassa University (reference FVM- 287 IREB/02/2020). All the data obtained during the study were with the consent of the donkey owners. They were clearly informed about the purpose and benefit of the study.

AY: Data curation, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Investigation, Resources. DD: Data curation, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – review & editing, Formal analysis, Visualization. BM: Data curation, Methodology, Writing – review & editing.