New Forest Pony
What really makes the New Forest unique is the 5,000 ponies which roam the untamed heathlands. These locals have been hanging around for nearly 2000 years and helping to stop the open woodland and heathland from turning to scrubland.
A breed of their own
New Forest Pony is a recognised British isles breed but has an interesting background. According to newforestpony.com, the earliest record of horses in the new forest was back in “1016 when rights of common pasture were granted to the people living in what was a royal hunting ground”. Since then different bloodlines have been introduced, from the likes of Welsh, Exmoor, Thoroughbred and Highlands breeds being a few examples. This has meant that the appearance of New Forest Ponies can be quite diverse with most colours being found apart from piebald, skewbald, spotted or blue eyed cream. However, you’ll most commonly find chestnut or bay colour ponies wandering around the National Park.
They are truly wild
It is a myth that New Forest Ponies are truly wild. However, this is in some sense false. They are wild to the extent that they can freely roam around the National Park, however they are owned and cared for by the New Forest commoners. These are people who own land in the New Forest which rights of common are assigned. As part of this, commoners must pay annual marking fees for the ponies, ensuring each has their own owners marking and is registered with the Verderers. This is a body who enforce the special laws attached to the new forest, employing Agisters who take care of the day to day issues that any ponies may have from road accidents to managing round up of ponies when needed.
What do they eat?
During the spring and summer, the New Forest has plenty of grass for the ponies to graze on. This is incredibly important to ensure that the new forest landscape doesn’t change, preserving open forests and heathlands, stopping it from becoming scrubland. However as the year goes on and summer turns to autumn, the grass begins to grow back more slowly meaning the ponies need to find other food sources like gorse and holly to supplement their diets. Plenty of acorns can be found in the New Forest, although they are supposed to be poisonous to them due to the high levels of tannins, some of the ponies seem to be able to eat them happily in small quantities. To try and help ponies from eating more acorns, each autumn commoners release their pigs who are immune to the high levels of tannins and feast on all the acorns that they can find.
When are the foals born?
Each and every spring you will find lots of people flocking down to the New Forest to see all the recently born foals with their mothers. It is one of the many ways that the forest comes to live, from the plants to the animals.
Breeding takes place between April and July, with the gestation period being around 11 months for ponies. Each year Verderers closely control the breeding by selecting which stallions should be released to mate with the mares. During the rest of the year, stallions are kept on private land meaning that the ponies that you see on your adventures are most likely all female.
