Saturday 28 April
2001 Be grateful you don't live with . . . a Poitou donkey. It's huge and hairy - up to 14 hands high at the withers, with a matted coat sometimes made into dreadlocks. The baudet, or stud donkey, was used to sire mules on the Mulassiere mare, a cart-horse breed. Because the baudet often preferred asses to mares, it was necessary to urge him on with violin music or rattling chains, or, if all else failed, a "religious silence". Sometimes, the mare stood in a pit to make it easier for him. Twenty-five years ago, numbers fell to 44 donkeys, so nowadays the national stud baudets only sire other Poitou donkeys, not mules.
-- Anonymous, April 28, 2001