Tuesday 2 August 2016

02/08: NEW FOREST PONIES, DONKEYS, DEER

Yet again, I find myself apologising for the gaps between Blog posts.   Despite my antipathy to FB and refusal to get my own FB page I'm afraid I tagged onto hubby's account a while back and now find myself drawn in and spending too much time on that site ... although I don't have a dedicated page/art site of my own.

One of the main attractions of FB is that I don't have to downsize photos before posting them which saves a lot of time - my camera takes very large pictures! 

But I will make the effort to post more here as I do like Blogger better than FB and it doesn't become as 'b*tchy' as the so-called Social Media sites.

David and I have just returned from a lovely break in Hampshire where we stewarded for 2 days at the UKCPS Regional Exhibition which ran for nearly a month.   It was a fabulous venue with the Gallery being in the reception area for the Sir Harold Hillier gardens and next to the popular cafe/restaurant - so footfall was very good. 

We took the opportunity to do a bit of sightseeing around the local New Forest area - my last visit there was about 50 years ago!   The New Forest is approx 145 sq miles of Forest and heathland and is very beautiful.

The ponies are semi-feral and you can read more about them here New Forest Pony information
and we also saw plenty of deer and donkeys

Here's a selection of the (FAR TOO MANY) photos I took there


































Now, if I can't find any good reference material amongst the hundreds of photos I took I need shooting!    

I also took some short videos but not sure how to add those to Blogger so will have to investigate as there was one foal who was absolutely full of the joys and made me giggle!

8 comments:

  1. Oh, Sue! What great photos! The 'ponies' look more like horses to me and they also look to be in great shape. Are they taken care of in any way - feeding/vet care?

    That one donkey with the very long hair is so unique and beautiful. Is it a particular breed as the others don't look like it at all.

    Hope you don't move from Blogger to FB as I'll miss out on so much of what you're doing. I don't belong because of the 'attitudes' you mentioned!

    Glad you had a good time but am so glad you're back!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Jan. Yes their welfare is monitored and once a year the ponies are rounded up, branded and wormed etc., There are several roads running through the forest and it was noticeable that the ponies like to gather on the roads and block access to the cars. At one stage I got out and herded a group off the road as they'd dozed in the sunshine and nothing could pass them from either direction. Sadly many of the ponies do get injured or killed by cars despite a lot of them wearing reflective collars to enhance their visibility at night.

    Mostly they are mares and foals with a few geldings. The stallions (pure bred New Forest ponies) are only into the Forest for a short period for breeding purposes. The breed standard shouldn't exceed 14.2¼" hands but you're right they do like 'small horses'

    I don't know about the 'shaggy' donkey. I just assumed it was an elderly donkey who'd hung onto his Winter coat longer than all the others but it did give him/her an interesting appearance.

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  3. can never have too many photos of ponies :) or donkeys, so cute :)

    the really hairy donkey I thought could be a miranda donkey but hard to tell really. not many photos of them online. could just be a donkey with its winter coat still

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  4. Hi Jennifer. You're right it could be a Miranda but I've looked at the website(s) for New Forest and there's no special mention of them. Looking at the picture of the Jenny with foal she looks very similar in colour but not so hairy so I'm leaning towards the 'elderly donkey hanging onto its Winter Coat' theory LOL.

    He did attract my attention though as looks quite quirky

    I loved the little grey donkey foal - kept following me and wanted his ears rubbed but I guess that's despite all the instructions not to feed the ponies/donkeys, I saw lots of families ignoring the rules. This leads to the ponies wandering onto the roads near the cars where they're in danger of being hit

    ReplyDelete
  5. I looked at the site too and saw that, and I think its cute they have the donkeys to keep the horses company lol

    yeah people tend to forget the rules when the rules are to do with cute animals :/

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  6. Thanks for the input, Jennifer. It does look very much like a Miranda donkey which is something I've never hear of before. Whatever it is, it's very unique looking!

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  7. LOVE all your horsey photos, Sue!!
    Kathryn

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hi Kathryn ... thanks for commenting.
    It was a real treat for me to revisit the New Forest and David (hubby) was very obliging about stopping every 200 yards so I could get out of the car to take photos/chat with the ponies!

    ReplyDelete

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