This campaign has now closed
RBST maintains a Gene Bank of semen from rare native breeds of UK farm livestock. This ensures that we have a genetic record of these breeds to protect valuable bloodlines in case of disease threats to breed populations. This project is the collection of semen from two Exmoor stallions.
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Situation
The Exmoor Pony is considered to be endangered by the RBST with a population of only around 500 adult breeding females, mostly running wild on Exmoor. The Exmoor Pony population crashed to about 50 ponies following World War II and all Exmoor Ponies are descended from these founder animals. Sadly, some of these founder lines are underrepresented in today’s population and in the event of an exotic disease hitting the UK, the population could be severely damaged with these lines being lost forever
Solution
By storing semen from quality stallions, it is hoped that in the event of another population crash the frozen semen can be used to rebuild the breed structure of Britain’s oldest Native Pony. Initially the Exmoor Pony Society and RBST are prioritizing stallions from bloodlines which are currently underrepresented within the population, as these are most at risk, but ultimately we would like semen stored from at least 25 Exmoor stallions, which are as unrelated as possible .