Newfoundland Pony

The first recorded shipment was Dartmoor ponies under John Guy in 1611, and imports of British and Irish hill ponies continued for four centuries. Farmers and fishermen used the result for everything: plowing, hauling nets, kelp and wood, and moving goods and people around the island.

The Newfoundland Pony Society estimates there were about 12,000 ponies in the 1960s and 1970s. Then in the 1970s and 1980s machines took the work and a ban on free roaming finished the job. Ponies were dispersed, ignored, and sent to slaughter, many exported for meat.

The Newfoundland Pony Society formed in 1980 to gather what was left and start a registry. By the society's count, numbers fell below 100 during the 1980s. In 1997 the province passed the Heritage Animals Act of Newfoundland and Labrador, which named the pony its first heritage animal, made the Society the official registry, and made it illegal to move a Newfoundland Pony off the island without an export permit. The point was to ensure the ones leaving went to breeders rather than to meat packers.

A pony of 11.2 to 14.2 hands and 400 to 800 pounds, running from fine-boned to stocky. Colors are bay, black, brown, chestnut, dun, gray, roan and white; pinto patterns are not eligible for registration.

Everything about the build answers the weather: a thick winter coat, a heavy mane, a low-set tail that sheds rain and snow, hooded eyes, furry ears, feathered fetlocks and hard hooves. A 2011 DNA study confirmed the population is genetically distinct.

Docile is the Conservancy's rating, and the Society enforces it: a good, workable temperament is a requirement for registration, not a hope.

They carry children and adults both, and the Conservancy rates them a novice handler's animal.

Riding, driving and light draft: the same jobs the island once demanded at working scale, now at leisure scale.

Most today are family ponies, ridden for pleasure, driven, and shown.

Cold is not the concern. The Newfoundland Pony Society's registration standard requires a good winter animal, hardy all round, and the Conservancy lists the breed as cold hardy. The society also calls them hard workers and easy keepers.

The breeding population is somewhere around 200 to 250 animals, scattered widely, and The Livestock Conservancy lists the breed as Critical.

The Heritage Animals Act is the legal backstop, but the practical work is what the Society was formed for: finding the scattered animals, registering them, and getting them bred.

If you are buying one off the island, the export permit is part of the transaction. Build it into the timeline and the paperwork before you bid.

Registration runs through the Newfoundland Pony Society. Two things disqualify a pony: pinto coloring, and a poor temperament, because the Society checks disposition before it registers. Ask for the registration status rather than assuming it; with a population this scattered, unregistered ponies of the type exist.

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