The climate on Coll is violent.

We have Atlantic weather. This means that we get ocean gales, hail storms, torrential rain and the brightest sunshine. Only tough grasses thrive in the acidic soil and this climate. During the winter the strong winds scorch the grass until by spring it is bleached nearly white, the rain turns the peat into a brown soup as deep as the pony’s knees.
Shelter is provided by heather, reed-beds and rocky outcrops. Winter can seem never ending but when summer comes all is forgotten. The sun shines from the clearest skies and at midsummer it is still light at midnight.. With the more or less constant breeze midges are not so great an irritant they are elsewhere.
We have no farrier or vet on the Island. We trim the feet when necessary. The colts are gelded when the vet visits for cattle testing.
Although we do keep antibiotics for an emergency we rely on learning each pony’s body language, keeping the whole pony well together with a wide choice of herbal medicines. We find Aloe Vera in different forms very useful. Having to be this self sufficient has been a steep learning curve. The most important thing is not to panic but to look, assess and take the appropriate action.
At the end of winter despite ad lib hay our ponies are lean and hungry, in summer they fill out with muscle as they scramble about after the choicer patches of grass, only in autumn do they fatten up ready for the hardships of winter.

We are fortunate that we have the opportunity to bring up our native ponies in such a natural way. All our stallions are very friendly and gentle, they live out with their mares and foals; these are family groups where the mares foal without hindrance in the herd. Owing to the severity of the winters we do not wean the foals until the following spring to give them the best possible chance in their first year; this pulls the mares down but they pick up as the weather improves; most of the pregnant mares wean the foals themselves, then both colts and fillies will spend more time around the stallion.

 We handle the foals from birth but they receive no formal training until they are four or five when they go to the Mainland to be backed. This is done using The Silver Sands Natural Horsemanship Method developed by Steve Halfpenny. We have found that it is the method best suited to native ponies who require a different approach from the conventional Natural Horsemanship methods.