About CoaSTable's Program

Our Zebra, Zola - the dam of Zany and Zen, was born late at night or early morning, June 14 or 15, 2010, near Dallas, TX.   CoaSTable brought her to her permanent home in Florida at the age of 4 weeks.  Along with Zany and her gelded (neutered) companion, Pixster (a rather rotund male brown miniature donkey), Zola loves to graze and migrate between her home pasture and stall to 2 adjacent pastures connected by our specially constructed zebra path.  On weekends, they are joined by our retired racehorse, Fortune Coast.

What CoaSTable has successfully accomplished is to breed Zola to miniature donkeys instead of full-sized donkeys. The first result, after a 13 month uneventful pregnancy, was Zany, a mild-mannered male born on May 30, 2016.   Zola was not bred again until 2018 in order to observe and learn more about developing minizonkeys.  After a 12 month-plus pregnancy, Zola delivered Zen on September 30, 2019.  She is lovely, frisky, and perhaps a bit more striped than her older brother.

The sires are Jack, an 8-year-old white miniature donkey, and his full younger brother (by a year), Dom. They are virtually identical except that Dom has a curly forelock and Jack's is relatively straight.   They are constantly playing with each other and are virtually inseparable together in their own paddock and stall.

Our unique minizonkeys, Zany and Zen, can also be called other terms that are used to describe zebra/donkey hybrids -- zedonk, zebonkey, zebronkey, zebrinny, zebrula, zebrass, or zebradonk.   Inasmuch as miniature zonkeys are rare, there are no names yet developed for them.  Therefore, we refer to them as a miniature zonkeys.

What makes our miniature zonkeys so noteworthy are two factors: first, generally such hybrids are produced by a male zebra and female donkey.  Secondly, there are almost no miniature zonkeys produced in the world.  We know of one that was born in the past at a Mexican zoo.  It is believed that other miniature zonkeys might have been born in China and Japan as well.  Previously, it was believed that because of a discrepancy in the chromosomes between female zebras and miniature donkeys, it would not be possible for the zebra to conceive.