Chincoteague Pony

Origin: United States – Chincoteague Island off the Virginian and Maryland coasts.

Height: Chincoteague pony is about 12hh.

Color: All colors; pinto is commonest.

Character: Chincoteague ponies are stubborn and intractable, though with careful training Chincoteague ponies sometimes make good children’s ponies.

Physique: In photographs that are not to scale they are easy to mistake for horses of a “common” lightweight type. The build of a Chincoteague pony is that of a small horse rather than a pony, and it does not have “pony” heads.

No one knows where these ponies came from, or can account for their surprising presence on Chincoteague Island to which the Chincoteague pony is not indigenous. Legend claims that a boat carrying Mcorish ponies from North Africa to Peru was shipwrecked off the coast of Virginia in early colonial times and that some of these ponies swam to Chincoteague pony, which is separated by only a narrow channel of the sea. Here Chincoteague Pony survived unknown to man for a very long time.

Since the discovery of the Chincoteague pony by man, the pony is said to have become better looking: nothing to do with basking in their own reflected beauty, but more likely due to a rumored introduction of Welsh stallions to the wild herd, or perhaps to the new blood of another kind.

Every year, on the last Thursday and Friday in July, Assateague ponies are rounded up and swum across the channel to Chincoteague, where ponies from both islands are sold by auction.

See more: Chardllais Haldbred Horse