Alan Partridge's semen could save rare pony breed
Alan Partridge's semen could save a rare pony breed.
The Exmoor Pony Society has launched, and raised £50000, for a campaign to create a gene bank, aiming to preserve genetic material and protect the breed's future, with a stallion named Alan Partridge one of the animals donating.
The 15-year-old, who qualified for the Horse of the Year Show aged six, has won multiple shows and sired 12 ponies according to Horse & Hound magazine.
Perhaps surprisingly, Alan is based in Suffolk, rather than Norfolk, and is owned by mother and daughter breeders Sandy Wooderson and Madeline Haynes, who are "delighted" to take part in the gene bank campaign.
Only 600 Exmoor ponies, or 15% of the population, are actively breeding, making the breed vulnerable due to a lack of diversity. Stockpiling semen in gene banks means that in future, a viable population could be restored or disappearing bloodlines saved.
Memorably, Alan's human namesake demonstrated his dubious knowledge of equine matters in one of his first television appearances, reporting from the horse racing at "Marple":
And the presenter, who will publish Big Beacon, his third memoir, in October, subsequently recalled pony trekking in Cornwall as a schoolboy: