The weekend of 1-2 October saw the fifth birthdays of Morris and Aitana, with the two days falling on a Saturday and Sunday as they did five years ago. They had new plastic buckets to play with (and quickly broke them) and they also went for a birthday walk.
Returning to the question of the donkey weight chart, we now have some figures.
Rubí (7 years 6 months old) is 116 cm high and 126 cm heart girth = 205 kg
Morris (5 years old) is 118 cm high but a hefty 145 cm heart girth = 290 kg
Aitana (5 years old) is 117 cm high and 127 cm heart girth = 210 kg
Matilde refused to go anywhere near the yellow snake with numbers on it (tape measure) and I gave up chasing her around the field because the whole exercise was going nowhere.
There remains a huge problem with this: a pear-shaped donkey like Rubí, when measured around the heart-girth, seems to come out as “ideal”. If by “ideal” we mean shaped like a Zepellin that would be fine, but I don’t think this method works for pear-shaped donkeys! I will contact the Donkey Sanctuary.
And a final thought: they wouldn’t put a bronze sculpture of an obese donkey outside the Donkey Sanctuary, would they? And that looks pretty much like Morris. So let’s call him “Ideal.”
Equus Asinus 
That’s the problem with uniformity! Try the human BMI and you’ll see what I mean. Another symptom of utilitarianism. Creation is messy!
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There’s a thing called “hay belly” which is not a disease but just a tendency of some horses/donkeys to have a very round tummy. I’ve read a better indication of whether donkeys are fat is if they start to get deposits of fat on their neck. I saw from the diagram you showed previously that they also get deposits on their hips. After your previous post, I checked my donkeys and my Don Quixote is starting to get quite the hip padding. We’ve had a pretty lush summer with lots of grass this year. Who’d have thought grass is fattening? Oh well, winter is coming so I’ll have more control over their feeding.
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I have also heard that the neck is where donkeys really show extra weight. But, like humans, build must come into it- Ambrogio is a well built donkey, tall with sturdy legs; Sascha has ballet dancer legs and so her tummy somehow always looks fatter than his.
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