Commoning animals

Probably the most well-known fact about the New Forest is that it is home to thousands of free-roaming animals.

As you travel across the National Park you will see ponies, cattle, donkeys, pigs and sheep. They could be grazing on gorse, wandering through villages or even crossing roads. That is why it is so important to drive carefully in the Forest and stay alert at all times.

The animals all belong to people called Commoners, who have the right to turn out their livestock onto the Open Forest.

In this section you can find out more about each animal.

Then find out how you can help protect the animals by reducing animal accidents and not feeding or petting them.

There are several thousand cattle on the Forest in summer, with numbers dropping sharply in the autumn and winter when the grazing is not so plentiful and many have to go back to their owners’ holdings. A variety of breeds of cattle roam the National Park, with Galloway and Hereford crossbreeds being particularly popular for their hardiness.

Some calves are born on the Forest, but Commoners usually take their cows back to their holdings before they are due to calve in case there is a problem. Many cattle are also taken off the Forest in the autumn to prevent them from being poisoned by eating acorns.

There are only a few hundred donkeys turned-out in the New Forest, compared with thousands of ponies and cattle. But they are quite visible, often seen roaming in villages such as Beaulieu.

Donkeys are smaller and generally more docile than New Forest ponies. They are extremely hardy and can survive on the Forest all year round without having to be returned to the Commoners’ holdings over winter. However, they are prone to lameness if their hooves are not regularly trimmed.

Donkeys prefer browsing trees and bushes to grass, and are occasionally unpopular with their human neighbours for nibbling an appetising hedgerow!

The New Forest pony is one of the best-known images of the National Park.

Many thousands of ponies roam free across the Forest and you will come face to face with these famous Forest residents as you journey across the area.

But the ponies are much more than just window dressing. They are sometimes described as ‘the architects of the Forest’ because it is their grazing that creates much of what people know and love as the New Forest – the close-cropped lawns between the wooded areas and the distinctive browse line on the trees marking the highest point ponies can reach.

Each pony is owned by a member of the commoning community – local people whose properties have common rights allowing them to turn out ponies to graze on the Forest. They ponies are said to be ‘half quiet’ or semi-feral and aren’t tame, so please keep your distance as they often have lice and they can bite and kick. You can be fined or prosecuted for feeding or touching the ponies and donkeys.

In September each year for a couple of months, the famous New Forest ponies, cattle and donkeys are joined by another group of animals – pigs.

Commoners let their pigs loose on the Forest to hoover up fallen acorns which are poisonous to ponies and cattle and can cause internal bleeding and death. The pigs also eat beech mast, crab apples and anything else they can find.

The exact dates are decided by the Verderers and Forestry England according to seasonal variations. For example, the ‘pannage’ season, as it is known, can start towards the end of September and extend to the end of December because of a glut of acorns.

Pannage is also known as ‘common of mast’, one of the common rights attached to various properties in and around the New Forest that allows commoners to graze their pigs on the Forest. Traditionally pannage enabled commoners to fatten their pigs for slaughter and salting in the winter.

There is only one Commoner turning out sheep in the New Forest at present, and these are to be found grazing on the National Trust-owned commons around Bramshaw, in the north of the National Park.

Sheep are not generally seen roaming on the open Forest because the right to turn them out (known as common of pasture for sheep) is attached to only a few properties and is rarely exercised. Sheep also tend not to fare well in the New Forest environment, as they are prone to fly-strike and lameness, and typically prefer the conditions offered by higher moorland landscapes such as Dartmoor.