Exmoor Ponies
The most obvious thing about Exmoor ponies is that they all look alike. They are around twelve hands high, and they have stocky brown bodies which are dark on top and lighter underneath, with black points and a characteristic light oatmeal colour over their muzzles and round their eyes (known as a mealy muzzle).
Exmoor ponies are unique amongst the British pony breeds in that they are as nature intended. In fact, they have the same characteristics as the original British Hill Pony that came to Britain about 130,000 years ago. Man tends to select differences and rarity (unusual markings, for instance) but Nature tends to select similarities (an unusual marking on a pony would make it more visible to predators, so the pony would probably get killed before it could breed). So individuals of the same wild species all look remarkably similar (think of badgers, blackbirds, gorse bushes) whereas species which have been domesticated (think of dogs, horses, budgies and roses) have been bred to create a vast array of different colours and sizes.
Why Exmoor ponies survived without alteration by humans is a mystery. Exmoor has always been a sparsely populated area with no significant trade routes and no major towns nearby, and Exmoor people don’t take kindly to interference from outside. For instance, when Henry VIII created ‘The Horse Laws’ (which made it an offence to use stallions under fifteen hands high for breeding and ordered that mares not able to bear foals ‘of a reasonable stature’ should be killed) the Exmoor farmers of the time appear to have taken no notice.
In 1921 several local breeders got together and formed the Exmoor Pony Society, thus ensuring that the breed was kept true to type despite the fashion for ‘improving’ native ponies.
The ponies nearly died out during the Second World War; most of them were killed for food, leaving only about forty-six mares and four stallions, but the local farmers soon re-established their herds with the help of a remarkable lady called Mary Etherington.
Today there are about 300 free-living Exmoor ponies on Exmoor, and about 1,300 worldwide, but only a fraction of these are used for breeding. However, the number of breeding ponies may increase in future due to new grants under the Higher Level Stewardship scheme for grazing endangered native breeds.
The book Survival of the Fittest: A Natural History of the Exmoor Pony by Sue Baker (ISBN 978 0 8618344 3 3) is essential reading for anyone interested in Exmoor ponies.
All the Exmoor pony herds which graze the different areas of moorland within Exmoor National Park are free-living (not truly wild, like red deer) because they are owned by farmers with grazing rights on the moorland. There are several pony herds on Exmoor. Each herd lives on a particular area of moorland. For most of the year the ponies fend for themselves, but in the autumn they are rounded up and the foals are weaned and inspected. Until recently all foals which passed inspection had to be branded, but microchipping is now allowed as an alternative to branding. However, a brand is much more useful than a microchip when trying to identify unhandled ponies on open moorland. Please do not feed free-living Exmoor ponies. Ponies looking for food from people can become aggressive, and they are much more likely to get run over if they hang around car parks waiting for titbits.
A visit the Exmoor Pony Centre at Ashwick, near Dulverton, is a must for anyone interested in Exmoor ponies. It was set up to give the surplus foals from moorland-bred herds a future by training them to be useful family ponies. Visitors can learn about Exmoors, see how they are trained, handle them and (if under about eleven stone) ride one. Please see www.moorlandmousietrust.org.uk or telephone (01398) 323093 for further details. Rides and handling sessions get booked up well in advance during the school holidays, so don’t leave booking until the last minute. The Exmoor Pony Centre runs an Exmoor pony adoption scheme – the next best thing to owning an Exmoor pony!
The Exmoor Pony Society website has lots of information, including a show calendar and a list of ponies for sale www.exmoorponysociety.org.uk .
