What Is A Hinny?

When my son learned about where mules came from, he was suddenly really interested in all sorts of different crossbreeds.

He would ask endless questions about what animals could make what crossbreed.

We were out at a local petting zoo the other day, when someone mentioned that they had an animal that even I had never heard of; a hinny.

I had no idea what a hinny was, so I went to find out and was not disappointed.

So, what is a hinny?

A hinny is the offspring of a male horse and a female donkey. It is the inverse crossbreed to the mule, which is the product of a male donkey and a female horse. Hinnies are more donkey like in their temperament, because the female donkey raises them.

If you’re like me, you always thought that it didn’t matter if it was a male horse or a female donkey or the reverse.

The result of a horse mating with a donkey was a mule.

But that isn’t the case, and actually the type of animal that you get is heavily dependent on the mother.

So, let’s look at the question in more detail.

What is a hinny?

So, as I’ve said, a hinny is the result of the mating of a male horse and a female donkey.

Mules, which you probably are more likely to have heard of, are the result of mating a female horse and a male donkey.

Though this distinction might seem unimportant, think about it.

The kind of animal you get is going to be very, very heavily dependent on the mother.

A hinny is essentially a donkey with some of the features of a horse.

It’s much more heavily donkey because of its maternal parentage.

Equally, a mule is much closer to a horse (at least in size) because it develops in a horse’s womb.

A mother horse bestows mostly horse features onto a mule, with some of the desirable traits of donkeys.

So, despite what you might think, hinnies and mules are very different.

But which is better?

Well, that’s a difficult question to answer, since we have to establish what we mean by better, but let’s do our best to answer it.

Is a hinny better than a mule?

The simplest answer is that mules have been much more heavily favored by people who need working animals, and so in that sense, mules are much more useful than hinnies.

They’re stronger, typically more docile, bigger and are very hardy.

Mules are favored over horses for a few reasons, but most importantly is that you simply get more years of work out of a mule.

Hinnies are less common, for a few reasons.

One is simply the ease of breeding them.

Donkey jennies (females) are much less likely to mate with a stallion, and much less likely to produce offspring when they do.

Horse mares bred to donkey jacks are much more eager and much more likely to conceive.

If you do manage to birth a hinny, with the right temperament, they may excel at doing mule work.

From farmer’s and rancher’s perspective, though, there’s no sense in trying to breed a hinny when trying to breed a mule is so much easier.

Can a hinny reproduce?

In almost all cases, hinnies are sterile, and cannot mate.

This is very often the case with interspecies breeding.

The main cause for this is a difference in the number of chromosomes.

Donkeys have 62 chromosomes, whereas horses have 64.

Thus, any hybrid of the two species will haeve 63.

This uneven number of chromosomes causes an incomplete reproductive system, and while hinnies may feel compelled to mate, they will not be able to impregnate the female or become impregnated.

Mules are the same, for the most part, so it’s not surprising.

Interspecies breeding generally does not produce fertile offspring.

What is a hinny’s temperament?

One of the big differences between horses and donkeys is in temperament.

Horses tend to be more impulsive, with bigger personalities and a lot more energy.

Donkeys, on the other hand, tend to move through life more slowly and more methodically.

The marriage of these two temperaments in mules produce one of the English language’s most well-known idioms in ‘stubborn as a mule’.

So what about hinnies?

What is their temperament like?

The simple answer is that a hinny is much more like a donkey than a horse.

Again, it’s been raised around horses, so this is what it knows.

In reality, the question of temperament is much more a nurture than a nature one.

Whatever the crossbreed, it will be socialized early in life by its mother.

If the mother is a horse, it will be more horse-like; if its mother is a donkey, it will be more donkey like.

Hinnies are quieter, slower, tend to do things in a more methodical and thoughtful way than mules.

So, by and large, hinnies are much more like donkeys than mules are.

Hinnies are certainly less common, then, since mules tend to be bigger and stronger, and so have been bred more commonly.

Hinnies are nonetheless entirely common, and have been described as having the body of a donkey with the extremities of a horse.

A small, donkey sized body with overly long, horse extremities is not the best for doing work on the homestead.

Hinnies are still entirely loveable, though, and it’s easy to understand why they’re so popular in petting zoos.