Dartmoor Pony Society endorsing Eating them to save species.

undergroundoli said:
I know you did, but I was referring to the thread title, which claims they are a species! :P



The thing is though, what if responsible breeders stop and people who produce rubbish continue to breed? What if by the time the market picks up the quality mares produced by responsible breeders before the market folded are too old to put in foal?
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All the breeders I know personally have either not bred anything or perhaps just had one foal over the last three years, these are people that breed quality animals that have won at the highest level. The local horse traders whose mares all seem to be under 14hands and of no known breeding are out with years foals and the stallion is in with them. I have not seen the chap but I am going to ask him up front where these are going to end up. My feeling is he will sell the foals for about £100 and then they will be next years dumped animal when it gets over the cute factor and the grow a set of b****. He has 10 mares in a field he has paid about £400 for summer grazing, they of course not wormed or trimmed so he has covered his costs and if he gets a nicely marked foal that's his profit.
Please sign this petition, its to make trading standards and the police enforce existing regulations,
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/66742
I think all foals should be chipped and passported by two months, this would cost the breeder money and make ponies less of a 'cash crop', and might make them either breed less or cull more. Deregulation of hill ponies was the worst thing they could have done as it almost encourages breeders to breed out on the hill or moor as they can opt out of the law we all follow.
 
Here is a petition from SWEP. I'm not wholly sure that I agree that we shouldn't seriously consider the meat market as an option. However, I believe the sentiments within this petition absolutely should absolutely be our first step:

"South West Equine Protection want the government to take a stand and enforce removal of stallions or vasectomising stallions grazing on Dartmoor Commons to reduce the numbers of ponies running on the commons"


Just thought I'd share it on here as there are strong feelings being expressed here and some people may want to sign it.

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/70051
 
I had to really challenge my thinking on this one.

The first thing I had to do was to stop thinking of these as wild ponies. They are actually farmed animals. They are managed livestock and wouldn't exist without the farmers (commoners rights holders) on Dartmoor.

The issue is that there is no market for them as their traditional markets have dried up. i.e. selling them as work animals or for meat. The meat market has disappeared because they cannot be exported as live animals.

According to the websites the current numbers stack up something like. 10% of foals are returned to the moor, 30% are sold as 'pet' horses, 60% are slaughtered.

What Charlotte Faulkner is doing is to try to create a market for the slaughtered animals to justify keeping the horse on the moor.

Another alternative would be to just allow economics to reduce the number of horses kept on the land. Presumably to be replaced by other more economically viable animals such as sheep. This would impact on the ecology of the moors and would probably require human intervention to maintain the landscape , such as scrub clearing. In my mind not such a bad option. ( being sentimental about horses I can't really differentiate between whether the horse is killed for human consumption or not.)

However, maybe the last option is to really think about whether they have a purpose? They appear to do two things that have value. 1. They are a tourist attraction. 2. They maintain the ecology. But someone needs to manage them.

So what it needs is a way of subsidising the farmers to keep non breeding ( i.e. by surgical or contraceptive means) ponies on the moor. Part of the funding for this could come from the tourist trade, ( for example allow passing tourists who view the ponies to pay via mobile phone, or road tolls ) and part from the National Parks, or major land owners ( Duchy of Cornwall, Forestry Commission, and South West Water) to pay for the avoidance of them having to maintain the landscape by scrub clearing. The commoners would be paid annually for each non fertile and healthy horse that was kept on the moor. They would not be paid for breeding stock , or for any horses they sold on for profit.
 
why can't conservation grazing herds run on Dartmoor? There are lots of conservation herds of Exmoors around the country- colts are gelded, have basic handling etc and turned out into stable herds. We have a couple around here in this part of Scotland, overseen by local councils and checked by keen volunteers (who would much rather count ponies than sheep!). They seem to be quite a draw for visitors although none of the sites charge. Personally I think we should be using our rare Native breeds for this rather than cross breeds or foreign breeds such as the Konigs.
 
The ponies out on Dartmoor are of mixed breed with alot of shetlands and cobs cross breeding. Farmers are still turning out shetlands to cross breed. The hill ponies are not properly managed because the Farmers are allowed under their commoners' rights to turn out any breed of pony they like. Hill ponies are overbred and now they are trying to promote a human consumption meat 'scheme' to 'protect' the wild ponies on the common: https://www.facebook.com/dartmoorponymeat/?fref=ts Meanwhile the purebred Dartmoor is a rare and endangered breed, which has to be kept on isolated areas away from the feral ponies such as Bellever Forest where their breeding can be protected. I cannot understand why those responsible for the commoners rights on Dartmoor are allowing this travesty to happen whilst hundreds of ponies each year go to slaughter, and not only that are seeking to help the farmers make money from meat products for human consumption so that the slaughter can be allowed to continue, whilst dressing it up as 'conservation'.
 
claireannejames said:
The ponies out on Dartmoor are of mixed breed with alot of shetlands and cobs cross breeding. Farmers are still turning out shetlands to cross breed. The hill ponies are not properly managed because the Farmers are allowed under their commoners' rights to turn out any breed of pony they like. Hill ponies are overbred and now they are trying to promote a human consumption meat 'scheme' to 'protect' the wild ponies on the common: https://www.facebook.com/dartmoorponymeat/?fref=ts Meanwhile the purebred Dartmoor is a rare and endangered breed, which has to be kept on isolated areas away from the feral ponies such as Bellever Forest where their breeding can be protected. I cannot understand why those responsible for the commoners rights on Dartmoor are allowing this travesty to happen whilst hundreds of ponies each year go to slaughter, and not only that are seeking to help the farmers make money from meat products for human consumption so that the slaughter can be allowed to continue, whilst dressing it up as 'conservation'.
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You do know this thread is from October 2014?
 
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