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

Update on North American Fell Pony Population Status - 2018 stud book

Each year I review the stud book of the Fell Pony Society to learn about changes to the North American Fell Pony population. In January 2020, I finished my review of the 2018 stud book. The chart below shows how the population has changed since 2000 through 2018. 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.

Here are the highlights of my review of the 2018 stud book. 

• There are roughly 650 registered Fell Ponies in North America.

• As our population ages, the number of deaths annually is understandably increasing.

• The number of foals was greater by a dozen than the previous year.

• In 2018, we had sixteen breeders.  That is tied with the highest number of breeders we’ve had; the previous year we had that many was 2008.  Half of the breeders in 2008 weren’t still breeding in 2018. 

• There were two new breeders in 2018.

• There were about twenty five new owners of registered Fell Ponies in 2018.

For me, it seems like there are lots of Fell Ponies in North America now because 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!

This article was originally published in the January 2020 edition of my e-newsletter Fell Pony News from Willowtrail Farm. If you would like to subscribe, click here.