The aftermath of the discovery of so many sick and dead horses at Amersham [a UK horse dealer found to have many starving or dead horses on his premises] -many of which were waiting in a queue to go for meat - has brought home the reality of horse breeding in this country [the UK].

For semi-feral native ponies, their value as ambassadors for their breed, as conservation animals for the countryside and the sheer pleasure of seeing them out in the wild, has to be balanced against the dangers of over production. We have to be truthful about what happens to surplus ponies. As a meat eater, I can’t have a problem with ponies going straight to local abattoirs for a humane death at the hands of experts, nor can I have a problem with them being put in a big field of grass to be fattened up and then taken direct to the abattoir. What I do find saddening is large groups of tired, hungry and dehydrated ponies, often freshly weaned foals, being touted at markets and fairs up and down the country being sold to inexperienced people, or eventually finding their way abroad through the back door only to be sold for meat 'on the hoof'.

These ponies are competing against the fall out of racing yards and the indiscriminate breeding of injured mares at the same time as people are being tempted to import better bred horses and ponies from the Continent. Unhandled and poorly handled semi-feral ponies are often only attractive to the uninitiated, or well intentioned and hopeful novice, and things so often go wrong from the outset.

Apart from being really careful about the quantity and the quality of the native ponies that we breed in the wild, how can we set these ponies up for success?

It seems really obvious when you say it out loud, "ponies are prey animals, humans are predators and each time a prey animal meets a predator, it needs to be convinced that there is no need to flee". By handling our native ponies in a non-predatorial manner we can make it more likely that ponies will make the transition from moor to door.

Looking at it from the pony’s point of view, their first encounter with people (save for picnic nicking New Forest ponies) is a group of humans arriving on horseback and quad bikes to chase them into a confined area. In some areas this is known as colt “hunting”. The next thing that happens varies from place to place. On Exmoor the foals are often separated from their mothers immediately, whilst on the New Forest they tend to be kept together. In some cases they may have a halter put on them and be tied to something solid while they are branded.

Horses are naturally 'into pressure' creatures, so their instinct is to pull back as hard as they can. The ropes tighten around their nose until the breathing is inhibited, the pony is subdued and then the Agister, commoner or inspector can get on with the job of branding the pony with a hot iron and, if deemed necessary, inspect the pony for breed compliance, which may include picking up its feet. The pony doesn’t know that there is a benevolent purpose to all of this and its perception will be of an attempt on its life.

Encounters such as this will leave an almost indelible mark in the pony’s memory and set it up for failure in all but the most experienced and committed hands. If you have what you think is a near death experience, what you perceive to be a real attempt on your life, you will do your utmost not to repeat it. I hear of ponies that will go through barbed wire fences, run until they drop or attack with mouth or feet in order to avoid being touched by a human hand ever again. Some of this is nature rather than nurture, but the genuinely untouched horse is rarely so frightened.

Taking the time to handle ponies in a non-predatorial way saves time in the end and does a lot less to undermine the overall reputation of the breed as a malleable, ultimately trainable pony. I compare it to transactional analysis in human psychology - if you speak to someone as if they are a child, they will respond like a child; talk to someone as if they are your parent and they will respond like a parent, but the key to good relationships is for both to talk to one another as adults. As humans we can rationalise and bring things back to this even keel. In horse psychology, if you behave like a predator, the horse has no choice but to act like to prey, and the key to a partnership with a horse is to act like a partner, so that the horse can do the same.

Alternatives to Extreme Handling of Semi-Feral Ponies
There are some alternatives to the more extreme ways that wild ponies are handled, which are already employed in some places, but more can be done. In some areas, ponies are not branded until they have been fully handled, and they appear to be far less traumatised by the experience.

* Drifts and gatherings could be controlled more so that they don’t appeal to the cowboy minded – there is no need for lots of whooping and hollering at high speed.
* At the end of the driftways there should be well-built corrals, like those in the New Forest, where ponies are not even be tempted to escape and where the risk of injury is reduced.
* Ponies can be moved around using quiet body language so that they are less confused than when they are hit with sticks.
* Onlookers need to be supervised so that they don’t inadvertently block ponies by standing too close to the pen.
* Foals should not be tied up to be branded – the New Forest foals seem to be less traumatised when they are simply shoved up against a fence next to their mother and branded once.
* The practise of ear twisting in order to induce endorphins needs to stop as it leads to innumerable ear shy ponies.
* Similarly ears tagging or cutting for identification purposes is a sure fire way to make sure they never trust anyone with their ears again.

Hot Branding
Branding is a controversial subject in its own right. It has been successfully argued that hot branding is vital for the identification of ponies in the wild, and kinder to unhandled ponies than freeze branding because it is so much quicker, but that doesn’t explain why a New Forest commoner would ask that his pony is branded twice with the same brand, or why ponies that are leaving the wild for good need to be branded at all. Then, branding is a matter of pride or 'designer labelling' rather than a necessity. Branding needs to be done effectively, and there is certainly no excuse for poor branding, or repeated branding with irons at the incorrect temperature, or where the pony hasn’t had its hair clipped out first.

Later Handling
Later, the process of halter breaking tends to place the emphasis on forcing the pony to co-operate with a halter, and often involves tying the pony up to something solid for long periods of time to fight it out - this is known as swinging. The critical part of halter training should be teaching the pony to accept being touched, then they can be shown that a headcollar is nothing to be afraid of, and simple pressure and release can be employed to teach them that they need to come forward to a pull on a lead rein. This gentle and effective approach takes less than an hour with a genuinely untouched pony, leaves no negative memory and significantly reduces the risk of permanent injury to the vertebrae and musculature – the head is, after all, attached to the back.

Great strides have already been taken to improve practices at some of the sales – better facilities and strict handling procedures in the auction ring, where handlers are limited to waving flags at ponies to get them moving, rather than hitting them. Nevertheless, there are sales yards where ponies and foals are still given nothing to eat and drink all day - 7.30 a.m. to 7.30 p.m. in some cases. Ponies may be put in inappropriate groups where they can be bullied and injured by other ponies, or they can’t get away from the crowds. For some ponies, one sale follows another.

What can be done to improve the situation for Semi-Feral ponies?
Better information could be disseminated to new owners at these sales by the organisers or welfare authorities– current advice focuses on the need to keep the halter on and pull the pony about for a few days before turning it out. This is rarely enough even for so called halter broken ponies. New owners need to spend a lot of time touching and handling their ponies and building up trust and confidence incrementally. All too often ponies are turned out into large fields with poor fencing, where the new owners struggle to get near them, inadvertently reinforcing the pony’s need to flee every time they fail to catch it. Its mother, God and instinct have all taught the wild pony not to go near predators and not to get its head and feet caught up. Food, patience and love are sometimes enough but the right facilities and the right skills are critical if the pony isn’t to find itself being re-sold as uncatchable, untouchable and often still entire.

by Sarah Weston

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