Hello and welcome to Blue Agave Ranch. We are a very small breeder of Mammoth Donkeys and Papillon Dogs.  We have only 3 Papillons total and they are completely house pets who sleep on the beds with us.  We currently have 7 dogs, 3 cats, 7 horses, 3 miniature donkeys and 5 mammoth donkeys.  The big dogs are crosses of Great Pyrenees and Anatolians and they are naturally nocturnal and naturally guard livestock.  They patrol the property at night keeping coyotes, bobcats, mountain lions and the like away from out animals.  Many of our animals are rescued, and include a totally blind Appaloosa horse and a crippled Arabian Stallion.  Most of our cats come from feral parents and we pull them from barns when they are tiny and tame them.  Most of our dogs were dumped out as puppies or rescued or rehomed when someone had to give them up.  We are full up, so please don't try to give us your unwanted animals.  (For dogs and cats, find a group that advertises on the Petfinders website and ask if they will list your animal for you.)

We made this website so that people who are interested could become acquainted with donkeys, an animal who has been beside us much longer than the horse. Many people are familiar with the 'BLM burros'. a medium sized feral donkey that was released by old time gold and silver prospectors and early Spaniards from Mexico and other travelers in the American West. They are adopted out along with wild horses at regular auctions. If you talk to the caretakers of these feral donkeys before they are adopted, and also to the people who adopt them, you will find they have developed a great affection and respect for donkeys, as do almost everyone else who gets to know them. When people get to know their first donkey, you will hear them exclaim how sweet and smart and gentle this donkey is, thinking it is unusual, until they find out that they are almost ALL like that.

You can easily see wild burros if you travel to Arizona. They live in the bottom of the Grand Canyon, around dependable water sources here and in many other states of the west.

Some people do not know that Mammoth donkeys or Miniature Mediterranean donkeys exist so we have photographed them and will tell you more about them. We do not breed 'standard' sized donkeys, as there is no shortage of them, but we do breed the rarer mammoth size.  (We bred miniatures for about 8 years and our jennies became too old to breed so we have retired them.)   It is interesting, though, that both miniature and mammoth donkey's spots seem to have been borrowed from the standard sized ones, and then they have to work to get the spots back into the size they want. Animal lovers usually enjoy looking at other people's animals so we put up some pictures and stories about our pets. One of our dogs, Grudge, had an especially difficult start in life, and was rescued from a house with over 100 dogs INSIDE. I will put his story on the pets page.  I also will be putting the story of Daisy, the starved pony-sized mule on the our horses page. 

We do not keep any animals besides domestic animals on our little ranch, and nothing but dogs, cats and equines. We rarely offer a litter of AKC Papillon puppies, usually 1 to 3 puppies.  We usually sell them to selected retired people who like small, happy, healthy and easy to care for dogs. I spent 5 years as an animal control officer on the ' welfare squad ', so I am aware of the severe dog and cat overpopulation that is caused by NOT spaying and neutering dogs and cats, as well as (in my opinion), veterinarians who DO NOT offer low cost spay and neuter surgery, especially in poorer areas such as small rural towns. We try to do our part to pull some unwanted pets off the streets and offer them health and a good home, but it will be a few years before we have any room for new ones.

Although we have lived all over Arizona, we relocated from the Phoenix, Arizona area in 2001, where we gathered wild kittens and tamed them, gave them shots and adopted them out, using the funds to trap, fix, vaccinate and re-release the healthy adult wild cats in our neighborhood. Sometimes we had as many as 20 kittens at a time, up to half being bottle fed. The rural area we live in now has more coyotes, owls, and bobcats and therefore no viable feral cat population.

I have worked as a veterinary surgical nurse, technician and now as an RN, so I am not intimidated by caring for large numbers of animals. My kids are also very experienced in animal care.

Nancy Casurella, Owner
Blue Agave Ranch                     Email us

Blue Agave Ranch - About Us

Our home on Blue Agave Ranch is in Benson, southeastern Arizona in Cochise County. Tucson is the nearest large city and is about 35 to 40 miles west of us. We are also very near the historic towns of Tombstone and Bisbee, Arizona and in the path of the Butterfield Stage Line. In this area, the famous Apache Chief Cochise and his warriors held out against the tide of Europeans at the end of the 1800s. The altitude is just over 3500 feet so that it is slightly cooler than Tucson (2200 feet elevation) and much cooler than Phoenix (1100 feet elevation).

Our family has lived in several parts of Arizona, most recently in Phoenix. We relocated here in 2001 and bought a few acres near the San Pedro River. A few months later a neighbor informed us that our property was a fire hazard due to all the uneaten grass and mesquite trees we have. Now I think he just said this because he wanted to do us a favor and graze some cows on our property. Nonetheless, he did have a point, and I began researching what kind of animals I wanted to keep the grass short.

I imagined us getting a few baby beef calves that we would grow attached to and then not have the heart to have them slaughtered when they were 'ready for market'. They would live here until they were 20 years old! So cows were out. Goats are agile and hard to fence in; horses, although fun to ride and we have a whole herd now, can have major vet bills if they are around barbed wire due to their strong 'fight or flight' instinct. Also, they can colic or founder if you don't keep a close eye on them. We wanted a type of animal that my kids and I could handle and that were easy to take care of and weren't prone to illness or disease. Many domestic animals have seemed to 'lost their brains' when being bred strictly for another purpose, such as milk, wool, or meat production (pigs excepted - reason unknown!).

I began reading more about mules and donkeys. I knew that mules 'got their brains' from donkeys. When I learned that donkeys REALLY LIKE people, rather than just thinking of people as a nuisance or something to fear or a meal ticket, I got interested. Then I read that donkeys will try to stomp on any predators,such as coyotes, that come onto the property, and I started envisioning a ring around our house where our Phoenix-trapped wild kittens and our small Papillon dogs could continue to go outside near the house without being snapped up by coyotes or bobcats. We keep BIG DOGS with them to keep the birds of prey away. Then I began reading website after website and book after book about how sweet and smart and friendly donkeys are, (excepting breeding jacks, who should be watched) and decided that these were the animals for us. After another year of planning and searching for the best conformed animals with gentle temperaments from reputable breeders we settled on some miniature animals from MINIPICKENS in Oregon and mammoth jennies from Missouri and New Mexico. The miniature donkeys are fairly rare, while the Mammoth donkeys are rare. Both types are more like dogs than equines in personality and we are VERY happy with them!

Email for any questions or comments or just to visit!
 

Nancy Casurella
Benson, Arizona

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Blue eyed purebred Arabian filly picture above.  We are not allowed to register her per condition of ownership, due to her blue eyes.  Eye color has to do with the 'sabino' gene, she also has white above her knee on one leg.  My daughter calls her 'Saphira' and claims her as her own.  My daughter Grace is going to train her to be an English jumper.  She is tall for an Arab and we expect her to reach 15.3 hands.  She was born in 2006.  She is also pictured on the right.

We picked up this little yearling colt at an auction October '09.  He appears to be a tall Arab cross, coloring is some kind of roan.  The only unusual marking is a kind of crescent on his forehead.  Name ideas would be appreciated.  He was one of the last horses in an auction where there were more horses than people attending.  He is currently hanging out with the miniature donkeys as the big horses like to pick on him.  So far, we have thought of the name 'Eclipse.'  We would entertain an offer for him if he looks like an animal someone would be interested in.  He has excellent conformation and has obviously been handled since birth.  You can easily pick up all his feet and he is not the least bit skittish.  I think he was crossed with a thoroughbred or is just a tall Arab.