Ponies Staying Alive on Shackleford Banks

3/22/2026

Stallion with a 3.5 Henneke Body Condition score

According to the 2025 Annual Report from the Cape Lookout National Seashore, 20 ponies (17% of the herd) died on Shackleford Banks in 2025. This mortality rate was significantly higher than the 6% average from 1999 to 2024. The deaths were primarily due to a lack of available resources for some of the individuals.

Shackleford Banks, being an island, has limited grazing for the population of horses. The National Park Service and the Foundation For Shackleford Horses have a federal mandate to keep the herd between 110-130 individuals at all times.

They do not manage the herd with supplemental feeding or vaccinations. They are allowed to let the numbers fall below 110 individuals if it is due to natural causes and not management culling. There were seven foals born on the island in 2025. One died, and two had to be removed for care and rearing off island as they had somehow come to be separated from their mothers and their bands.

The bands we have seen so far are thin and grazing like crazy on the new grasses sprouting. These are tough ponies, and they have now come through the winter; most of them should be able to start putting on a little weight.

There is a scoring system for horses called the Henneke Body Condition Scoring System, which ranges from 1 to 9. One is extremely emaciated, and nine is extremely fat. The ponies we have seen so far run from about 1.5 to 3.5. A score of 3.5 is thin for a horse.

The interesting thing is that the two stallions we have seen so far are in better condition than the mares, with scores around 3-3.5. The mares we have seen have scores around 1.5-2.8. The two yearlings we saw, also look a little better than the mares, 3-3.5, like the stallions.

Dark bay mare on the left is still nursing her yearling foal. Her body condition score is about a 2 and the chestnut stallion to her right has a score of about 3.5

The two yearlings with body condition scores around 3. They are fuzzy so hard to tell that they are still thin

We have seen one mare that is still allowing her yearling to nurse a little, which is probably a bit taxing for her at this time of year. The yearling is also eating grass, so a little milk is a few extra calories for him. I read that wild horses, particularly those on Shakleford Banks, allow their foals to nurse for much longer than domestic horses. Yearlings on Shackleford will nurse mostly for social bonding until they are almost two or until their mother has become pregnant again. This prolonged nursing is one of the reasons there are such stable and cohesive bands on Shackleford.

The dark bay mare allows her yearling to nurse

It's a tough place to live. I think of these amazingly tough ponies surviving the storms and cold on this island in winter, almost everything stops growing, the body demands calories to survive the cold, and somehow, they manage. At least the majority do, and have for 400-plus years.

Back to the ones who don’t. We found a pony’s bleached bones remains on our first day on the island. We observed the teeth set in the skull some more to let them tell us a bit of the story. Probably a mare, absence of canine teeth. She was between 3.5 and 4 years old as the last molar was just coming in. I’m guessing she died from what the NPS refers to as “a failure to thrive”. You have to be a strong pony to make it to old age out here, and plenty do. A mare lived to 34 and a stallion to 29. Many others make it into their 20s. These are extraordinary ponies in a majestic, magical yet harsh setting.