The famous ponies of Chincoteague are about to get a healthcare upgrade thanks to a new barn being built for this express purpose. Each summer the wild ponies are gathered up and swim across the Assateague channel from their home on Assateague Island to Chincoteague Island where some ponies are auctioned off. Approximately 150 adult ponies and their foals live in the islands that bridge Virginia and Maryland.
The annual swim and auction are big business for the community, bringing crowds of tens of thousands of visitors each summer and millions in tourist bucks. So there’s a lot of local motive to keep the horses healthy.
“Some of our vets have to work out there in the wild, which is not that easy to do,” Hunter Leonard, a Saltwater Cowboy and member of the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Company No. 3, which takes the lead in caring for the herd, told a member of a local CBS affiliate WBOC. “And then when we bring them here to the carnival grounds, it’s still a somewhat open area. We’ve never really had a big barn.”
The ponies receive vaccines and other veterinary care several times throughout the year, but according to the news item, the new barn is a $45,000 (USD) facility that will have six stalls, electricity, and refrigerators for meds. All this is the norm for any stable, but new for this group who care for the wild herd.
The pony auction raises funds for the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Department which owns the herd and has a grazing agreement with U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. The pony swim and auction has been going on for 100 years and this year will take place in the early afternoon of July 24th. The pandemic moved the auction online and that turned out to be a boon for the organization, bringing in almost $100,000 more than when it was purely a live auction.
That sort of money is what allowed the new barn to be built. “I mean my gosh, it’s just allowed us to have so much more free cash on hand to be able to do something like this and get this done and be able to afford things like that,” Leonard said.
The barn will also have a lean-to which will provide shade to those in attendance for the auction. The Saltwater Cowboys hope the barn will be completed by year’s end.