North American Fell Pony Population Status - 2019

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As we have all been taught to do this past year, I will blame Covid for my tardiness in generating an update on the North American Fell Pony population. Each year I review the stud book of the Fell Pony Society to learn about changes to the North American Fell Pony population. This review is based on the 2019 stud book, and the review will quickly be out of date when the 2020 stud book is published in the spring of 2021. Nonetheless, there are important points to be made by the 2019 analysis.

The chart below shows how the population has changed since 2000 through 2019. The blue bar is the resident population. Red shows foals born in the year, and green is imports in the year. At the bottom of the bars is purple, showing deaths in the year.

NA pop status.png

Here are the highlights of my review of the 2019 stud book.

  • There are just under 700 registered Fell Ponies in North America.

  • As our population ages, the number of deaths annually is understandably increasing, with nine in 2019.

  • The number of foals was slightly less than the previous year.

  • In 2019, we had seventeen breeders, the most ever. Just as I found last year, half of the breeders in 2009 weren’t still breeding in 2019.

  • There were three new breeders in 2019, which is about the same increase we see each year.

  • There were about thirty new owners of registered Fell Ponies in 2019.

For me, it seems like there are lots of Fell Ponies in North America now. Compared to when I got started, there’s more than 20 times as many! Yet there really aren’t that many, and there are lots more people who need to learn about this breed because they will fall in love! Thank you for the role you play in the stewardship of this breed in North America.

(c) Jenifer Morrissey, 2021

There are many more observations about the Fell Pony breed in my book Fell Ponies: Observations on the Breed, the Breed Standard, and Breeding, available internationally by clicking here or on the book cover.