Pony Penning 2024 is in the books. As auctioneer Tim Jennings says when taking a winning bid at the foal sale, “All in, all done.”
The 99th Annual Pony Penning Roundup on Chincoteague Island in Virginia was held July 20-27 and what a week it was! Approximately 40,000 people attended the pony swim. The fire company set an all-time record for foal sales, bringing in a whopping $547,300 with a record number of foals sold.
The ponies are owned by the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Company (CVFD). Money raised not only pays for expensive fire company equipment and supplies to protect the community, but also funds the cost of shots, worming and healthcare for the feral ponies living on the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge - the best cared for herd of wild ponies in the USA.
The week began with crowds waiting for the south roundup on Saturday morning. The northern bands were rounded up on Sunday, and then on Monday, thousands gathered for Beach Walk. Against a backdrop of the sun rising over ocean surf, saltwater cowboys brought the 14 northern bands down the beach, escorting them to the pens on Beach Road to join the three southern bands.
On Tuesday, veterinarians checked every pony, marking ponies too old or too young to swim with red spray paint. These ponies travel to Chincoteague by trailer. Buybacks were marked with blue paint. Each foal was tagged with an auction number and any horse needing vet care was transported to the pony medical building.
Wednesday’s swim was held at slack tide, just after noon. Slack tide is that time between the tide coming in and the tide going out, when the water is still. It is the safest time for the ponies to swim and it came at high tide this year. Chincoteague ponies are familiar with water and often swim on their own, so they didn’t hesitate to plunge into the channel, making the quarter mile swim across the bay. No pony has ever been lost in 99 years of this annual swim.
The first foal to hit the shore is named King or Queen Neptune and is raffled off. Twelve thousand tickets were sold. This year, foal #6 won the honor, a chestnut pinto filly out of the mare Clara by island stallion, Thunderbolt. Foals are numbered in birth order, making her one of the older foals.
Denise Bowden, CVFD Vice President and Carnival Chairman thanked everyone involved, from fire company members to the community at large, volunteers, Saltwater Cowboys, veterinarians and all who turned out to support their biggest event of the year, which included a nightly carnival.
“You never know what each year will bring, rain or sun, humidity or cooler temps, low slack or high slack tides, mechanical issues or everything running perfectly. You just never know but somehow it always happens,” she said.
At Thursday’s auction, 88 foals were sold. Since Covid, the auction has taken online bids as well as live bids, bringing a rise in prices. The lowest bid for a take-home foal was $1,600, with the highest going for $8,500. The average price was $3,804.
Every wild pony has a name. Photographers, Darcy Cole and her husband Steve track the ponies and take photos of every foal for auction sale booklets and for online bidders. Thousands follow their favorites on Facebook. You can learn about the bands of wild ponies at dscphotograpny.net.
Each year, a number of foals are selected to remain on the island – based on bloodlines and sometimes color. These are called Buybacks. Bidders pay for these foals knowing the foal will never go home with them. Money paid sponsors the foal’s care and is a tax write-off. The winning bidder gets to name the foal.
This year, seven buyback foals were kept – five fillies and two colts. In an unusual twist of events, a yearling was among the buybacks. Over the past few years, the fire company has watched for a colt with the chocolatey color and flaxen mane and tail of their most popular stallion, Surfer Dude’s Riptide, a flaxen sooty chestnut with splashed white 1 (whose genetics can produce blue eyes and splash pinto coloring). Foals of this color are born bright chestnut and often don’t change color until after the auction. In 2023, saltwater cowboy Hunter Leonard had a hunch Gidget’s colt by Puzzle would mature into this color, so he purchased the colt with the intent of donating him back to the fire company if that happened, and it did!
Stoney Creek Chincoteague’s Buyback Group won the yearling with a $41,000 bid. The group is organized by Tipson Myers and Allison Dotzel of Hughesville, Pennsylvania. They are currently voting on a name.
The highest buyback foal sold was Wildfire’s orphaned filly, sold for a record breaking $50,000. (You may remember the story of Wildfire in the last issue of East Coast Equestrian). A group of donors called Buyback Friends of the Wild Chincoteague Pony Herds won the bid. The group is organized by Darcy Cole. They named her Wildfire’s Phoenix, a fitting name for a filly who rose from orphaned ashes.
Darcy’s group also won the bid on a black pinto buyback filly out of Wildest Dreams by Hidalgo, naming the filly Mariner’s Elegy. The name is a tribute to the crew of the Marine Electric, a ship that sank in a massive storm off the coast of Chincoteague on February 11,1983 while carrying 24,000 tons of coal. The Coast Guard had asked the Marine Electric to turn back and help a smaller ship called The Theodora. For hours, they sheltered the Theodora, acting as a sea wall while a Coast Guard helicopter lowered pumps and the cutter Highland came from Chincoteague, but hours of pounding waves took their toll. The ship went down. Only three survived of the crew of 34.
“Ellie is her call name because it means bright shining one,” Darcy Cole said. “It fits the electric theme because their mission was to deliver coal to Boston to keep the lights on. This foal is the perfect foal because the black in her coloring is like the coal [this ship was carrying].”
The Chincoteague Legacy Group won the bid on Ember’s palomino buyback colt by Chief, paying $30,000. The group is currently voting on a name.
Darcy was pleased with the choices made.
“This was the best buyback class in all of our years following the ponies,” she said. “The herd got some amazing additions!”
The nonprofit Feather Fund celebrated its 20th anniversary with another year of purchasing foals for children. Recipients are selected (through an application and essay procedure) in honor of Carollynn Suplee, who – for the 8 years she survived cancer – purchased a foal for a child or a buyback as a way of giving back for another year of life. This year, Aurora Menges of New York state took home Suede’s colt by Riptide and Hope Leininger of Illinois took home Skylark’s filly by Ajax.
The week concluded with the southern ponies swimming home to Assateague Island on Friday morning. As pony hooves hit the shore of Assateague, mares and foals followed herd sires, making their way to the water holes. Life on Assateague was back to normal.