Llanwrtyd consists of a bridge, a church and a scatter of houses in a steep-sided valley among high green hills. As I parked by the churchyard, the sky was blue. There were a couple of tiny ponies standing in the bottom of the valley. Roger Davies picked me up in his beat-up red Land Rover and we rumbled up into the hills above the forestry, doing the rounds of his 1,000-odd ewes and his 110 pure-bred Welsh mountain ponies.
He pulled into a gateway. We climbed out to contemplate a dozen or so ponies lounging elegantly on a green bank at the edge of a rushy field. The rules of the Welsh Cob and Pony Society class Welsh ponies in four sections.
The smallest, Section A Welsh mountain ponies, must stand no higher than 12 hands, or 4ft (1.2m) to the shoulder. An ideal Welsh mountain animal is built along the lines of a workbench — sturdy, with a leg at each corner to enable it to scamper up its native hillsides. It should have a flat back and hefty quarters for uphill power; chunky, shock-absorbing rectangular leg-bones; hairy heels; and a luxuriant mane and tail for protection against the most savage of Welsh weather, winter as well as summer. It should also have a dished or retroussé face, inherited from Arab stallions introduced to the hills by improving landlords in the 1780s.
The job of the Welsh mountain pony in the traditional farm economy was to crop coarse grasses to encourage the short new growth favoured by sheep — “just like a Scotsman keeps cows”, says Davies. Tiny though they are, they are tough as stunted oaks, and shepherds used them as they now use all-terrain quad bikes. And in the bad old days, ponies “showing four flat teeth” — four years old — made ideal draught animals in the needle-thin galleries of the valley’s coal mines 30 miles to the south.
These are herd animals with minds of their own, truly wild but entirely confident with respectful outsiders. Davies has lived in their society since he was a boy, and shares these characteristics. His pony year starts in July, when he puts the stallions in with bunches of mares selected to ensure maximum genetic diversity. The ponies stay on the mountains until December — Davies’s land goes up to 518m (1,700ft) at the wild nexus of Brecknockshire, Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire. After Christmas he brings them down to his valley pastures, supplementing the meagre winter grass with hay. Foals start to arrive in May, come with a rush in June, and taper off by late July.
Advertisement
In October he takes selected ponies to the sales — Hay-on-Wye early in the month and Brecon later.
But all is not well in the Welsh mountain pony world. Machines improve grassland, and shepherds ride quad bikes, and the day of the pit pony is long gone. While bigger Welsh breeds prosper, the tiny Section A ponies find themselves redundant. Prices at auction now stand at around £35 for a foal.
Only 600 mares remain in the Welsh hills, and the breed is considered at risk by the Rare Breeds Survival Trust. Plenty of Welsh mountain ponies live in the lowlands, of course. But removed from the ferocious selection pressures of outdoor life on the mountains, they grow big and soft within a couple of generations.
Redundancy is not the only problem. Davies is a wise, funny man, to whom indignation is a foreign emotion. But he comes close to it when he describes the EU horse passport scheme that will shortly bang the final nail into the Welsh mountain coffin. This document, intended to certify horses’ suitability for human consumption, will soon become compulsory for all animal movements. It will force Davies to spend up to £100 per beast for veterinary certification. Passport issue will naturally be subject to bureaucratic delays. Foals must be four months old before they can be moved. If he is to have any chance of getting them to market on time, he will be expected to describe in minute detail the markings of newborns, as yet unused to herd life, which have never seen a human being and may die of shock if approached — if, that is, their mothers will let him get near them in the first place. Davies is in his sixties, and has nobody to take over from him.
It is difficult to imagine a new generation taking on this loss-making labour of love.
Advertisement
The ponies are as much part of the landscape as the hills above the tax-dodge pinewoods, and Llyn Brianne reservoir snaking between its wooded banks. The horses understand their world. According to Davies, they can even forecast its weather, heading for the tops in good conditions, the valleys in bad.
As I drove over the bridge that evening, the trees were bending and the first drops of rain hit the windscreen. But the ponies that had been in the valley bottom that morning were drifting up the hill. It looked as if tomorrow would be a lovely day.