Feral pony on my land

[Pennina]

I own a small DIY livery yard. My own horses are also on the property and I have someone that looks after them for me on a daily basis due to my work commitments.

One of our fields is adjacent to a small wood and on the other side of the wood is a 5 acre field with caravans that is a traveller site

One of their ponies has made its way through the woods and got into our field. We're not using the field at the moment because we are now resting it.

The problem we have is that the pony is completely feral and nobody can get near it. The bloke that apparently owns the pony is away until sometime next week. Various men from the site have been over a few times to catch the pony and have been unable to get anywhere near it. The pony is about 11 hands and young i.e. about two. She is very frightened and clearly not used to being handled at all.

My own groom and several of the ladies who keep their horses with us have tried for hours to catch her and nothing works.

The man who owns the traveller site says there's nothing he can do and it will have to wait till the pony's owner comes back on Tues/Wed.

The pony is so completely feral I am concerned that nobody is going to be able to catch it (ever?!) and it will spend its time running around my 10 acre field demolishing my electric fencing! Its owners don't seem that bothered about the situation as they can see the horse has plenty of grass and water. In fact the bloke that apparently owns the pony doesn't even answer his phone or respond to text messages.

Does anyone have any ideas as to how we can catch this pony? I have never ever been in a situation where I have come across a horse this feral!

Excellent news! Realistically I don’t think the owner would have coughed up any money so you did well to keep things calm and civil.

If it’s any consolation I have had to catch and return my neighbour’s two ponies to him 17 times in the last 10 years. They’ve been in my garden, land, the farms next door, the country lane and the busy road. He doesn’t give a shit.

Good stuff.

Excellent news OP. Well done for managing to liaise with them so efficiently!

In my area 20 separate people reported
some of the ponies on a site to RSPCA which are held in a small field by a main A road but the RSPCA said they believe the ponies are reasonably kept. It's so obvious they're not. They often end up being hit by vehicles when they wander into the road.

Recently they had a horse and cart race along the A road and it was so sad. The horses crashed violently into the central reservation whilst still pulling a cart with two men in whilst also being chased by a 4x4 who had men filming the race and shouting go on go on to force the horses to go faster, I unfortunately saw the video through a video posted on Twitter but I'm also local enough to see it in real life as well.

I hope the pony that was in your field has a nicer life! No one said anything to them about it. No police, no rspca, nobody exists when it comes to these issues and it's the poor animals that suffer