The Shetland Pony

by Charles Douglas; A. I. Douglas

“Colonel Balfour, grandfather to the present proprietor of Shapinsay, began pony breeding at the end of the last century. He improved the form; and when the colours did not come as they expected, the natives, with a few drops of whiskey to quicken them, laid the entire blame on Spunky, the Orcadian water-kelpie.

“He was black, they say, and the sire of some of the finest original ponies of the islands; and if he was disturbed in his courtships, he vanished under the waves in a mass of blue flame.

“The Hellersay stock have been quite able to dispense with him, as North Unst has furnished them with some of its choicest jewels.

“Brisk, the chestnut, dates very far back, and headed the Balfour stud for wellnigh thirty years, and his brother Swift was in the flesh for nearly forty-six.

“The piebald Cameron cost £24, and although he rather spoilt the colours, he introduced a better shape, a smaller head, and decidedly truer action. Odin, of the same colour, also kept up the form; Thor got them nearly all skewbalds like himself; and Lord Minimus was a grey and sire of grey beauties. They are shifted from island to island as the grass suits, and require the most careful drafting to keep them at nine hands. Mr Balfour has about 40 in all, of which the majority are duns and creams; and they are always broken at three, and made very tractable in a week. Her Majesty has a pair of them; and some of the more fancy colours were once picked up by Ducrow.”[35]

Colonel Balfour, whose enterprise is referred to by “The Druid,” was probably the first to attempt breed improvement in the Shetland pony. His grandson, in “The Druid’s” day, was in all likelihood the first breeder who made a systematic and deliberate effort to accentuate the small size which the poverty of nature and man had already fixed as a breed-characteristic; and his example has not been very widely followed in Shetland.

It cannot, in fact, be said that, on the whole, any clear idea dominates the plans or purposes of pony breeders in the Islands. Individual breeders here and there have pursued an enlightened course in endeavouring to improve their herds; and it is natural that their choice of breeding stock should have been determined largely by the nature of the commercial demand. They have thus been led to concentrate their attention mainly on the production of animals with the weight of body and strength of bone which have been demanded by British and foreign buyers. On the other hand, the conditions of existence in Shetland have greatly contributed to the preservation of an active type of pony such as can gain its livelihood on the poor and mossy pastures of the Islands.

It must be remembered that in many districts there has been, as has already been said, a great dearth of good sires, so that selection of suitable breeding stock has been difficult, and mating has often been carried on, of necessity, very much at haphazard. It is thus all the more remarkable that the pony, so long neglected and so little cultivated in its home, should display so high a degree of excellence as it does. Much of the credit of this belongs to the Marquis of Londonderry, whose stud in Bressay, under the charge of Mr Brydon and Mr Meiklejohn, developed a strain of ponies which fixed many of the best qualities of the breed and became a potent centre of its improvement; and no account of the Island ponies would be complete which did not mention the successful activity of Messrs John Anderson & Sons of Hillswick, the late Mr Bruce of Sumburgh, Mr Anderson Manson, and the Messrs Sandison. Notable throughout Shetland, the fine quality of the pony is specially conspicuous in Unst, which still retains the superiority which “The Druid” found in it in 1865. “The best ponies come from Unst; but both there and everywhere the breeders are far too indifferent to the points of a sire, as long as they are foal-getters. About a quarter of Unst has a skeleton of red sandstone and serpentine, with a thin soil studded with large red stones and the knobs of rock sticking up. Yet among these rocky incumbrances one sees scores of ponies picking the green grass, which the light of Heaven and the breath of the Gulf Stream force up from so barren-looking a bed. Still, Unst may be regarded as the heart of Shetland; and a sunny, genial-looking spot it is, when other parts of the country are dismal enough, in the late northern spring. The heather and the bog-grasses elsewhere do not make much milk, and the mare ponies sink so much in condition that they are invariably barren every other year. If well kept they reach 44 inches; but the average is from 38 to 42. Their owners frequently lose sight of them for a couple of summers, and recognise them when wanted, not by any formal ‘Exmoor Brand’ on the saddle place or the hoof, but by a peculiar slit or bits of tape, clout, or leather tied through a hole in the ear. Each cottar has generally a few ponies on the hill, and when the May and October sales at the different stations are at hand they circumvent them for a selection by the dealers with a line of forty or fifty fathoms. Still, the hard-working Shetlander is little more than nominal lord of his pony: poverty is his lot from the cradle to the grave, and, as the phrase goes, he is ‘still in tow.’ In his dire need the merchants become his mortgagees, just as the curers are to the herring-fishers: they advance money on the security of his foals, and he doesn’t get the best of it with ‘halvers’ mares.”[36]

The chief defects of the Island ponies are to be found in the movement and conformation of the hocks—“cow hocks” being common, and also a tendency to excessive bending of the joints. There is, in fact, a look of “curbiness” about many of the ponies which renders it surprising that curb itself—like almost every other unsoundness—occurs but rarely. How far these hock defects are caused or aggravated by undue hardship in early life cannot easily be estimated, but they can certainly be greatly mitigated by more generous treatment. Apart from them—and from a tendency to roach backs, undoubtedly aggravated by poor rearing—the Island ponies present few common defects that are practically serious; but their general appearance is often much deteriorated by insufficient care in early life.