Bank holiday Monday was the date of our annual round-up of our sponsor ponies Star, Misty and Breeze. They live on a beautiful Devon Wildlife Trust nature reserve on the north Devon/Cornwall coast - they are such lucky ponies and have an amazing variety of plants...perfect natural self selection!
It takes a lot of organisation to arrange the round-up and we are very grateful to our regular volunteers as well as to our friends Vanessa, Phillip, Rowan, and Frank our lovely farrier.
I think this is the 5th time that we have rounded up ponies from the reserve...Misty and Star are two of our traumatised ponies so life on the reserve is perfect for them - they would be very unlikely to find homes and on the reserve they have very little contact with people and get to live as "wild" ponies in a natural environment. Breeze is one of the "grown up" foals from the original herd - he was born with a lameness which doesn't cause him pain but would make him unsuitable as a ridden pony. The ponies definitely get used to the routine of the round up and the route. There's no chasing of ponies - it's all done on foot and as calmly as possible. We drift them to a pen which we make from panels, constructed at the top of the site...except this year there was a problem! We'd been told the key to the gate that we use to access the reserve would be in its usual location...but when we got there it was missing. We searched high and low and the key could not be found anywhere. It's a 3 hour round journey from our base to get to the site and a lot of work to organise all the people involved. Rather than abandoning the whole event, a "plan B" was formed.
The panels were moved to a position in front of the gate but the new area would be too small to enclose 3 ponies safely. Thankfully we'd put some orange net fencing in the car which we could use as sides of our pen. Volunteers were positioned at key points along the path. Vanessa caught Breeze up and led him up the main path. Misty and Star followed behind with some gentle drifting. Unfortunately they encountered some German tourists on the way up the path, this caused the ponies to divert, but thankfully they came back down to the main path again.
Misty and Star were headcollared. All the ponies were in super condition - they've managed really well considering the incredibly wet winter. This site has such a variety of environments, there are lots of places for them to take shelter. Frank trimmed the ponies' feet - their hooves were looking wonderful, just a little long at the front but no major trimming was needed.
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| The reserve is a beautiful location...we'd love to live here! |
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| Frank, our farrier, trimming Star |
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