Sunday saw the festive season kick off with style as Exmoor ponies from as far away as Yorkshire and Lancashire came together to compete at the Annual Exmoor foal show, with classes for everyone from fancy dress and pairs to the more seriously contended age group and foal classes.
The event provides a great platform for those foals weaned in the Autumn from their mothers to experience the show enviroment and interact with other ponies and humans!
The Anchor foals only came off the Exmoor moors in October, so it is a steep learning curve which requires time and dedication from us and the new owners to have the youngsters handled and in show mode within 6 weeks of living free on the hills in their herds.
The Anchor ponies were born and live free on Exmoor had a fabulous day with three of their foals claiming ribbons and first prize winners in the Moor Bred foal classes, the colt Anchor JaffaCake went on to be Moor Bred Foal Champion with the herds filly Anchor Jacquard in reserve spot, Anchor Jaguar was second having been trained and handled for only 3 weeks by Rachel Fear. Thank you Rachel. Jacquard was handled by Andrew hagley who has done a fabulous job on all our foals this year.
Neighbouring owner Sam Harris from Winsford took the overall top foal award with her own inground bred filly foal.
In the Yearling class the Anchor herd took the top spot again with Anchor Icicle, so named as she was born early last year in the very icy weather. In the two year old class our newly registered stallion Anchor Honeymead went very sweetly but was too ‘well’ and came home with a yellow ribbon!!!
All the rosettes had a christmas theme and many even had a jingle bell attached for festive fun!
Icicle was shown by David Wallace and they went on to claim the Filly Championship and Supreme of show under judge David Sykes,they also qualified for Exmoor Pony of the Year for 2015.
Several amateur photographers provided some great images to remember the day. Thankyou Tricia Gibson, Peter Yates and Mark Tabrett as well as Evie and Toby Hickman for organising such a brilliant event.
