A Zebra Can’t Change Its Stripes

CASTLE DALE, Utah —  Raising zebras isn’t as simple as black and white.

The striped equines are wild animals at heart, leaving only a few patient and experienced breeders in the U.S.

“Not everybody in town has one. Everybody in town should have one,” breeder Duane Gilbert says with a grin. “They’re neat.”

They’re also quite temperamental, so maybe everybody isn’t ready for one. Though zebras look like their domesticated cousin the horse, the black-and-white stripes can turn to a gray blur when the animals are spooked, which is easy to do.

Gilbert has about 40 zebras at his central Utah ranch. They look right at home, grazing on the grassy plain with a backdrop of red mesas. The only thing that looked out of place was a layer of spring snow, which Gilbert said the zebras get used to.

“When it gets down to 10 degrees, they’ll go in the shed. Above that, they like staying out,” Gilbert said. “They have sheds available all the time so they can go in and out.”

Gilbert is the only registered zebra breeder in Utah and one of just a few in the country.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture doesn’t register breeders by animal, but the American Donkey and Mule Society keeps a registry of zebra bloodstock and hybrid offspring. The Texas-based organization said that at one time, it had about a dozen members raising zebras and zebra hybrids, but that it’s now down to a handful.

“It’s not for beginners,” said Leah Patton, the society’s office manager. “There’s probably more people who think they want them, but don’t have the experience to deal with them.”

A few have learned the hard way.

James Cox has about 20 adult zebras on his ranch in Arcadia, La., halfway between Shreveport and Monroe. He remembers buying a zebra stud four years ago for $7,500, only to see his investment become startled and run head first into a tree, breaking its neck.

“The difference between a horse and a zebra is, a horse will think before he does, and a zebra will do before he thinks,” Cox said.

Still, Cox hasn’t given up on zebras. He said he’s as stubborn as the animals he raises and plans on doing it the rest of his life.

“I can still get up on a fence pretty fast if I have to,” he said.

Some breeders opt to raise a cross between a zebra and a donkey -- sometimes called a “zedonk” -- that can have the stripes of a zebra and the calmer disposition of a donkey. A well-trained hybrid can be tame enough to ride or work just like a mule. But trying to saddle a pure zebra would be asking for a kick or a bite.

In addition to their sometimes nasty tempers, zebras aren’t a sure thing to breed. Patton said it takes zebras five years to reach breeding age. And studs can be picky, rejecting the mares they’re offered. The frustration is enough to drive newcomers away fast.

“They come and go pretty swift,” Cox said of new breeders. “You’ve got to sort of think like a zebra to get along with them.”

For the few die-hard breeders, such as Cox and Gilbert, there’s something about the novelty of raising an animal most people see only on television or in a zoo.

Gilbert started raising zebras 15 years ago, expanding his exotic menagerie from the prize Watusi cattle he was raising.

He sells to petting zoos or people who want a zebra. He said small males average about $2,500 and females can go for twice that.

Gilbert, who works the night shift at a coal mine, said he isn’t in it for the money. He said the market is pretty steady and he makes enough to pay for his hobby. But mostly, he just loves zebras. He’ll take one to an elementary school or show them off to visitors.

One of his mares had a foal this spring and Gilbert named it Wally. Gilbert was giving Wally a bottle every four hours, walking through the snow to Wally’s pen in the barn, where the tiny, striped foal rested quietly beneath a heat lamp.

“When they’re bottle-raised, they’re just like pets. They follow you around. They just want to be with you,” Gilbert said. “If you’ve got one that you can pet, then the value goes up quite a bit.”

Gilbert said he and his family have learned not to expect the zebras to be domesticated. Their personalities, like their stripes, are unique and it’s useless to try to change them.

“You learn how they react to different situations and you learn to react with them,” Gilbert said. “As far as raising them, you make them do what you want to do by doing what they want to do.”