We often think of the Shire horse as a staple of the county show. Huge, gentle, and safe. We assume they are doing fine.
The data tells a different story.
In this episode, Anna Louise sits down with Tracy Wathen-Jones from the Rare Breeds Survival Trust (RBST). We move past the nostalgia of the heavy horse to face the biological reality: we are losing our native breeds.
We discuss:
The extinction numbers: Why the Exmoor pony and Eriskay are now critically rare.
The "frozen" insurance policy: Why we are relying on a gene bank of semen from the 1960s to save these breeds from total collapse.
The lost language: Why handling a Shire requires a different skill set to a warmblood—and why losing the "old boys" means losing the horsemanship skills to keep the breed alive.
Utility vs. Sport: Why "conservation grazing" might be the only job left for our native ponies.
This is not just a history lesson. It is a conversation about whether the horse has a future if it doesn't have a job.
Special thanks to the following photographers and societies for the images used in the video intro: Jennifer Feleris, John Green, Katrina Bell, Frances Ellis, Louise Blundell, Deborah White, El Dunlop, David Stewart, and the Eriskay Pony Breed Society.Learn more about our UK Native Horse Breeds on the Rare Breeds Survival Trust website: https://www.rbst.org.uk/pages/category/equine-watchlist
The Inquisitive Herd (Membership):The conversation continued after the mics cut off. Members can listen to the After-Hours Tapes, where Tracy shares the specific reality of funding these projects and the "messy" truth of breed societies.
