Fell Pony Color Distribution in North America

When I got a question about the color of Fell Ponies in North America, I remembered a feature in my database software that would be useful. It tells me how many of each color we have on this continent, broken out by gender. My database is currently populated through the 2023 stud book; the 2024 book just came out and I haven’t received mine yet.

Bracklinn Phoebe is a three-year-old grey Fell Pony filly.

Table 1 below shows the Color Report for North America through 2023. It indicates that black remains the dominant color in the North American population, and grey is a distant second. It also shows that the female breakdown mirrors the overall population. However, there are more black males gelded than colored males by comparison to the total population, begging the question of whether color is affecting choices to keep male ponies entire. And it looks like I have some research to do to resolve the color of the ponies in the ‘Unknown’ category.

As I have contemplated this question of color, I have been reminded that pedigree research, including color, is tricky terrain. In my over-twenty-five-years of studying Fell Pony pedigrees, I have noticed that no two databases contain the exact same data. Even the Fell Pony Society has differences between their on-line and paper data! The paper one, for instance, didn’t include color in the 1998 edition, while the on-line one has color for ponies born in that year. And the on-line one doesn’t have many of the older ponies that are in the printed stud books. My database is complete every year for the North American population, but I only populate the worldwide population about once a generation (8-10 years). Given that every database is different, for me, it’s always important to do apples-and-apples comparisons. I did an original research article about greys ten years ago, so it needs to be updated. I will update it using my database and not a different one. More soon!

© Jenifer Morrissey, 2025