Dartmoor hill pony culls

charles brenin

charles brenin

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Hi

The ponies on Dartmoor epitomise the moor’s wildness and beauty.
The ponies are a tourist attraction and have been on the moor for hundreds of years.
Every year we see the foals born and growing up. Trying out there new legs, galloping over the spring grass.

Do we ever stop to consider what their futures are?
Where do they end up? The markets are no longer giving much money for the ponies and many go home after market… If so many are no longer selling at market where do they go?

Well it seems there is a secret on Dartmoor… at least 700 foals have been shot in 2010 secretly on farms. Before they are even taken to market. Their carcasses shipped frozen to zoos to feed the animals. There are far more shot than this but finding out numbers is hard. Considering there is around 1500 ponies on the moor this is a large number and perhaps only the tip of the iceberg.

A convenient end to a tricky problem… what to do with your unwanted ponies. Shoot them.

Surprise surprise. Not only are they shot but… as you can see from the page below they are still being exported illegally to Europe for the meat market and for their skins.

http://www.equinerescuefrance.org/2010/11/and-the-ugly-2/

As you can see from this link they are not treated well on these journeys!


The farmers make no money from these culls and hardly any from the sales.

So if it were you, what would you do?
Perhaps you would think, ‘Ah I wont breed anymore as there is no market for them! I will let the mares rest and take the stallions off of the moor!’

But no!
Sadly such ethical concerns do not enter into it.

Stallions continue to be kept on the moor all year around. Causing massive over-breeding and culling, completely without need. There is no money made from the ponies, they are not paid for their carcasses. If they are it is merely a pound per carcass.

So you can see there is no need to keep stallions on the moor all year. Numbers could be managed on Dartmoor to maintain numbers for conservation grazing, (which is the primary purpose of the ponies being on the moor and the farmers being paid subsidies per head for them) without the mares being kept pregnant.

The mares could be run with a stallion when and if breeding is required.
The site below is a very good explanation of all this:
http://www.wildponies.info/overbreeding.html

I personally do not want to see more ponies bred just for slaughter or to be sold for meat abroad. Do you?

If you don’t then please write with your views on this to the Dartmoor Commoners council:

6 Lockyer Mews, Paddons Row, Tavistock, Devon, PL19 0HF
Email: enquiries@dartmoorcommonerscouncil.org.uk

And join our Facebook campaign at ‘Think before you breed’ which can be found on Facebook

Many thanks if you have read this.

Yours very sadly
Charles Brenin
 
Its no secret, its well known what happens, you forgot to mention the unsold foals at makets that end up straight in the insinerator, harsh but personally id rather they were used as zoo meat than just burnt.

the over breeding, is going to IMO take a long time to stop. there will always be suckers that thnik they can make a few quid, or are "rescuing something
"
 
Thank you for your reply.
I am not advocating that suckers try to rescue them.

This is nothing to do with rescueing.

Just that we lobby the dartmoor commoners to stop indiscriminate breeding for no reason.

Of course it is better if the meat is used. However they dont need to be bred in the first place. That is what I wanted to bring to peoples attention. The numbers shot this year have rocketed, this amount were not shot in the past. Whatever happens this needs to be brought to the publics attention wouldnt you say?
If people do write to the commoners it would help support the farmers who DO want this overbreeding to stop. There are many who would rather not have their mares bred from every year. But would still like to be able to keep them on the moor as they have always done.

Yes you are completely right its going to take a hell of a long time. But I have to start somewhere.
 
I may be asking a daft question, but I think it's also an important one.

Dartmoor Hill Ponies are NOT Dartmoor Ponies are they?

Dartmoor Ponies - are they an endangered breed?

Dartmoor Hill Ponies - anything that is born in the Dartmoor area? I've seen 'Dartmoor Hill Ponies' advertised for peanuts,all colours. Seems that any coloured pony born in Devon gets the name Dartmoor?

I may be wrong - I actually honestly think I may be wrong - so please correct me?

Is the Dartmoor Hill Pony actually a native breed?
 
The Dartmoor Hill Pony is actually THE native of Dartmoor, what people now know as a Dartmoor pony is actually a hybrid that was created i believe in victorian times as a childs pony. A welsh stallion was added to the native dartmoor Hill pony stock along with some arab to create what is currently known as the Dartmoor pony. The native Dartmoor Hill ponies have been around for far far longer and the little coloureds are actually believed to have been on the moor since well before Henry VIII. Unfortunately the Dartmoor Hill Pony is looked down on as a scrag end mish mash while the hybrid Dartmoor Pony is believed by many (wrongly) to be the correct version. The Hill ponies are incredibly hardy, and seem to be able to turn their hand to anything.

Taken from the Dartmoor hill pony web site www.dartmoorhillpony.com :-

It is believed that over two thousand years ago, Phoenician traders introduced ponies to the West Country. These original ponies evolved into two distinct breeds, the Exmoor and the Dartmoor.

Breeding for purpose

Why the Native Hill Pony was still valuable.

The mining industry found the native Dartmoors incredibly useful, and crossed them with Shetland ponies nationwide working underground, and there was a good market for Dartmoor Hill ponies.

The farming industry required a sturdy weight-carrying pony, so ponies who were strong and had good depth of bone were chosen as breeding stock.
The introduction of polo as a sport saw a new role for the Hill pony, and they were crossed with arabs and thoroughbreds to produce the athletic pony needed for the sport.

In current times, its job is as a tool of ecology keeping Dartmoor as we know and love it. Stock is chosen specifically with hardiness and ability to thrive on Dartmoor, although as there is a strong requirement under current market forces to produce coloured and spotty ponies, our foundation stock now includes coloured and spotty stallions and even cobs and arabs. This evolution merely carries on with the ancient traditions of breeding for purpose and adapting to market changes.
The pony now native to Dartmoor has evolved to suit whichever part of the Moor it lives on. The colours are mainly bay, grey, chestnut and black, with some coloured ponies.

Just over one hundred years ago, the pony breed showed a split into two categories. One group began to concentrate on breeding for the show ring (where appearance is most important) and the other group work on breeding for purpose (where adaptability and suitability for work is most important).
Breeding for beauty in the show ring

This was the beginning of the Registered Dartmoor pony breed.

The foundation stock, according to records, included Hackney, Thoroughbred, Welsh, Arab, Exmoor and even a Fell, all in the search for that elusive “quality”. Judicious crossing soon demonstrated what could be achieved.

In 1918, a mare called Blackdown (sire; a carriage horse, dam; a native Dartmoor Hill pony) had a foal by an imported Arab stallion called Dwarka, 14.1 hands high. This foal was bought by Sylvia Calmady-Hamlyn and was called “The Leat”. He had a quarter Dartmoor Hill pony blood. He was registered in the Dartmoor stud book despite a resolution forbidding judges to pass any pony with more than a quarter arab thoroughbred or hackney blood!

The Leat was aptly named as his blood flows in the veins of virtually every single successful Registered Dartmoor pony in the years that followed, right up to the present day. In “The Dartmoor Pony, a history of the breed” by Joseph Palmer, he says “He was of course the supreme example of the uncertainty of breeding.” (Page 38).

By 1925, the Dartmoor Pony Society had formed, and the type was established. Sylvia Calmady-Hamlyn used a Welsh stallion, Dinarth Spark, on a mare called Juliet IV. The resultant stallion, Jude, became a prolific sire and model for the Registered Dartmoor Pony of today.

No longer another Native running wild on the Moor, it was a recognised and properly recorded breed, with qualities governed by man.
The selective line breeding under expert and dedicated direction has created Registered Dartmoor Pony of today.
 
Thanks Bosworth - that was really interesting. Agree with OP though about reducing numbers of the Hill Ponies in the current climate.
 
Agree about the over breeding totally.

Not Dartmoors, but on countryfile they showed the farmer with his own herd of exmoor. He was very proud of the fact that his 21 year old exmoor mare was still 'having a foal every year.' Brilliant. And where do all these ponies end up?
 
I don't actually have a problem with them being shot, poor little beggars its all they are fit for a lot of them.
I totally disagree with breeding from those mares every year, there is someone who comes on here who organises the markets to sell them I think and she insists it is necessary to have stallions all year with them. It was a long time ago I had that argument though and I could be wrong.
Good luck with getting it stopped. It is possible, look how the forest bred New Forest has improved over the last 30 years, perhaps the verderers should go to dartmoor and sort it out. (I know there are still newfies worth nothing but its not as bad as when I was a child).
 
Sadly it's not illegal to transport live to other countries for meat. The WHW have been campaigning against this for years. And many, many horses are affected in this country by this.

As for a 'standard' cull. Far better that than being transported abroad, or left to starve when there is no money to feed them.

Well it seems there is a secret on Dartmoor… at least 700 foals have been shot in 2010 secretly on farms. Before they are even taken to market. Their carcasses shipped frozen to zoos to feed the animals.
Click to expand...

I actually find this rather reassuring. Better shot by a professional than going through these god awful places. And we would all agree that transport on the hook is far better than on the hoof.

There are far, far worse things than a swift, humane death.

Just that we lobby the dartmoor commoners to stop indiscriminate breeding for no reason.

Of course it is better if the meat is used. However they dont need to be bred in the first place. That is what I wanted to bring to peoples attention.
Click to expand...

And I completely agree with this.
 
I very much doubt you will ever get them to stop, partly because they feel it's their right, partly because even the money for the meat is better than no money at all.
The numbers grazing the moor have been greatly reduced, in the 18 years I've lived here it's been noticeable how fewer there are, and when I drove over the moor several days ago I thought how well they all looked.
My issue is with the rubbish stallions they use, scrubby little coloured jobs with dreadful conformation faults, any that appear pure Dartmoor are rare.
I would change the system to insisting on pure bred Dartmoor ponies only, with grants supporting them if they didn't breed from them. Of course a few would need to be bred but not the runts you see every day now.
Much has been done to make theponies currently there more attractive to buyers,now they appear at sales halter broken and not wild as the hills. (when we moved here I bought three, so wild they jumped in the old fashioned manger three feet off the ground in their stable to start with whenever a human appeared!). We tamed them, wormed them regularly and aged three took them to a local sale thinkingthey were a better prospect. Not so, my husband swore never again when a meat man bought the lot, but at least they had three years of a good life with us.
The ponies are surviving as I type this on no hay or feed and bitter temps in snow, I tend to feel perhaps if the farmers want to keep breeding perhaps they should also accept some limits, including feeding their ponies in weather like this, last year I could see three in snowy fields but the bad weather made it impossible to reach them as they were the other side of the valley, in two weeks of deep snow I didn't see a tractor deliver anything to them once.. I suppose when they make peanuts it isn't economic, then why bother having them at all?
 
The ponies on the moor now often have no relationship to any native Dartmoor pony. They are mongrels from stock of all types as from the rest of the page that Bosworth quoted above;-
"In current times, its job is as a tool of ecology keeping Dartmoor as we know and love it. Stock is chosen specifically with hardiness and ability to thrive on Dartmoor, although as there is a strong requirement under current market forces to produce coloured and spotty ponies, our foundation stock now includes coloured and spotty stallions and even cobs and arabs. This evolution merely carries on with the ancient traditions of breeding for purpose and adapting to market changes."

If ponies are needed to conserve the moor they need to be controlled like the New Forest scheme and all colts and stallions removed, for now at least.
 
its better to shoot them at home than transport them elsewhere, be it market or abroad and then shoot them, however, its better not to breed so many in the first place, especially as so many are by inferior stallions and there is no mrket for them anymore,it doesnt matter what ,or how good they were in the past, today is what counts,and no body wants them. The breeders are totally irresponsible IMO. heres a similar situation going on with welsh ponies too.
 
amymay said:
Sadly it's not illegal to transport live to other countries for meat. The WHW have been campaigning against this for years. And many, many horses are affected in this country by this.
Click to expand...

I thought it had been made uneconomical to transport horses out of the country live for meat. Don't they require a minimum value document (or something like that!) - that says they are worth over £100? Not sure of exact details, but thought this was supposed to prevent English horses travelling abroad for slaughter by making them too expensive for the meat market abroad?
 
I doubt very much that dartmoor ponies are exported live- given that Potters is only just up the road and they pay £20ish per pony.

I agree the over-breeding needs to stop
 
TheMule said:
I doubt very much that dartmoor ponies are exported live- given that Potters is only just up the road and they pay £20ish per pony.

I agree the over-breeding needs to stop
Click to expand...

unfortuanlty they do get transported. normally i belive via ireland where laws are different.
 
Unfortunately this problem goes a long way back, to the 1960's or thereabouts when coloured shetland X stallions were introduced on the moor and diluted the "pure" Dartmoor breed, which up till then had been highly prized as riding ponies for children and for driving.

As a result, the breed lost its uniqueness and - at that time, coloured ponies were not popular, so no-one wanted the Dartmoor wild ponies anymore.

Over time, the breed has totally become eroded and the "Dartmoor pony" you see up on the moor just isn't Dartmoor any more, its just a poor scraggy little creature with a very sad future unfortunately - and all because of someone, somewhere, allowing coloured runt stallions to run on the moor back in the 1960's and since.

Things will continue to get worse, not better; until someone comes to their senses and realises that the stallions MUST be brought back and/or cut!! It ain't gonna get any better till someone takes responsibility - where's the RSPCA in all this? Or WHW? I don't hear any bleating about it from them.......
 
I lived on Dartmoor in the late 1960's and the Hill Pony then was very much traditional stock with bays, browns, blacks and greys. We did not see coloureds until Shetlands were introduced and cross-bred.

The farmers rode these ponies to round up sheep and the riding schools and trekking centres used the ponies at other times of the year. Sure footed and reliable with wonderful temperaments.

Today the stock has been diluted suposedly due to market forces dictating that coloured ponies fetched a premium. Not so any longer as it costs so much to keep any pony!

I am now based in Hertfordshire and run a riding school, yes we have Dartmoor Hill Ponies and they are superb examples of true native breeds. We do not buy the "runty" ponies - these sadly do have to be pts. But then this is what any decent breeder does - weed out weak blood lines.

Charlotte Faulkner of www.dartmoorhillpony.com does a wonderful job for the ponies and deserves your full support.
 
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