LOL - the RSPCA do a fair job on the whole, but they aren't very Enid Blyton!
They aren't wild ponies, they will have an owner of a sort, but in a fairly loose kind of way. Various farmers have grazing rights and the ponies live on the moors and breed without much intervention beyond keeping a record of which is whose - in theory they are all tagged and microchipped, though I'm slightly dubious about exactly how that can be checked... If they are lucky, the owner feeds them in the winter. They round them up in the autumn to count them and some of the young ones get sold then.
It's a rather old fashioned approach to horse keeping!
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2011-08-08 08:33 am (UTC)They aren't wild ponies, they will have an owner of a sort, but in a fairly loose kind of way. Various farmers have grazing rights and the ponies live on the moors and breed without much intervention beyond keeping a record of which is whose - in theory they are all tagged and microchipped, though I'm slightly dubious about exactly how that can be checked... If they are lucky, the owner feeds them in the winter. They round them up in the autumn to count them and some of the young ones get sold then.
It's a rather old fashioned approach to horse keeping!