Hinny is easier to obtain when the lower chromosome count, the donkey, is in the male. Therefore breeding for hinnies is more hit-and-miss than breeding for mules." The male hinny or mule can and will mate, but the emission is not fertile. Male hinnies and mules are usually castrated to help control their behavior by eliminating their interest in females. Female hinnies and mules are not customarily spayed, and may or may not go through estrus. Female mules have been known, on rare occasions, to produce offspring when mated to a horse or donkey, although this is extremely uncommon. Since 1527,
The Horse and the Donkey The Horse and the Donkey The Horse and the Donkey is a variant of a fable type recorded since antiquity of which there is scarcely one version that concerns the same pair of animals. Included as one of Aesop's Fables and numbered 181 in the Perry Index, its Greek sources also include a donkey and a mule, while the story is told of an ox and a donkey in the Mediaeval Latin version of Ademar. In the former the overburdened donkey asks its companion for help in carrying its load and dies when this is refused; the other is then