Banker

The likeliest beginnings are specific. In 1526 the Spanish colonist Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon brought 89 horses to a settlement that failed within months, and in 1585 Sir Richard Grenville's expedition grounded ships on the Outer Banks; horses from both ventures are thought to have stayed. What is certain is that horses have lived wild on the islands ever since.

The herds have been managed for a long time. The Ocracoke ponies were fenced in 1959, and a 1996 outbreak of equine infectious anemia on Shackleford Banks led to 76 infected horses being put down, with close monitoring ever since.

Today the National Park Service, the state of North Carolina and private groups, principally the Foundation for Shackleford Horses and the Corolla Wild Horse Fund, share the management of the herds.

Four hundred years on sand and salt marsh selected an animal that holds condition on forage most horses would not touch, tolerates heat and biting insects, and has the hard feet you would expect from that ground.

A Banker is small and compact: 13 to 14.3 hands and 800 to 1,000 pounds, with a broad forehead, a deep, narrow chest, a short back and a low-set tail. Brown, bay, dun and chestnut are the usual colors.

Hardy, friendly and docile is how the breed is described, and adopted Bankers have made mounted patrol horses and children's mounts.

That is the temperament once the horse is gentled. The islands do not halter-break anything.

Off the islands they are riding horses: trail riding, pleasure riding, driving and mounted patrol work.

They are a Colonial Spanish strain, so they carry the family traits: endurance, an even disposition, and a size that suits a small holding.

That adaptation is also the thing to plan for. A horse built to live on marsh grass founders on good pasture, so a Banker needs its grazing restricted rather than improved.

Otherwise they are inexpensive horses to keep. Heat, insects and rough forage are what they were selected on, and the hard feet and easy keeping come with the animal.

About 400 Bankers live on the islands, split among herds that do not mix. The breed is counted within the Colonial Spanish group on The Livestock Conservancy's Conservation Priority List, and its status is critical.

The herds are actively managed by the Park Service, the state and the private funds, and the horses that leave the islands leave through those groups.

Buy through the herd's management group, and ask which island the animal came from: the herds have been separate long enough that the strains differ.

There is no conventional breed registry. The records live with the management groups, the Foundation for Shackleford Horses and the Corolla Wild Horse Fund among them, so the provenance question is which herd, not which herd book.

Plan for the gentling. Most come off the islands unhandled, which means real training time rather than a refresher, and the grazing plan needs to be in place from the first day.

Recent sale prices on HoofnHorn, where there are any, are further down this page.