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

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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.

Fell Pony NA population chart copyright Jenifer Morrissey 2020

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.