I’ve been shoveling manure and hollering “Whoa” for as long as I can remember. I have owned, cared for and trained countless horses and ponies over the years. After living with them, studying them and publishing numerous stories about them, I thought I knew just about all there was to know about horses. Recently, however, I realized that wasn’t quite true.

I had decided to write a story about the ponies used by Sir Ernest Shackleton in his quest to reach the South Pole some 116 years ago. Going into my research I knew that the ponies, mostly of Manchurian and Siberian descent, had been selected because of their strength and hardiness. But soon I discovered something shocking. The ponies were also prized for their ability to subsist on a diet that incorporated meat.

They fed those ponies what?!

I was familiar with the Scandinavian practice of feeding herring and other fish to horses and ponies. And, frankly, I had always found the image of a horse with a fish tail hanging out of its mouth a bit unsettling. But that was nothing compared to the stories I now read about Shackleton’s ponies feasting on polar bear or seal carcasses and crunchy little bird bodies.

Shackleton, preparing for his 1907 attempt to reach the South Pole, was aware of his ponies’ dietary preferences, so he had the British Army prepare a special ration that consisted mainly of dried beef. With that in mind, I suddenly had a “MythBusters” inspiration. Why not whip up some of the same ration that was devised for Shackleton’s expedition and see what our pony, Candy, would think of it?

Candy is not Manchurian or Siberian, but her ancestors lived on the Shetland Islands, which have some pretty severe winters. What’s more, we had just had our first real dump of snow of the year and Candy, shaggy in her winter coat, looked a lot like Shackleton’s ill-fated pony, Socks.

An unusual concoction

So off I went—with the British Army ration recipe in hand—to the Country Store to shop for the non-meat products. Then I headed down to the highway gas station for some trucker-approved beef jerky. The ingredients weren’t hard to find. But the price of beef jerky was a bit high so this was definitely going to be a one-off experiment. 

When I got home, my wife Andrea fired up the food processor, and we added the ingredients. First, a large helping of the dried beef, followed by lesser amounts of carrots, currants, milk powder and sugar. The finished product didn’t smell as bad as I thought it would, but I did not taste it. There were limits to the scope of this experiment.

After Shackleton’s pony, Socks, the last of the animals that he had set out with on his star-crossed journey, plummeted into a crevice and died, the explorer was forced to live on the pony’s ration. I would also have had to be starving before I let that stuff cross my lips. Instead, I reserved that pleasure for Candy. After warming the concoction up on the stove, I poured it into a bucket and headed down to the barn.

Candy shares our stable with two large Brabant mares, but they did not participate in the experiment. Relegated to the role of observers, the mares stood in their stalls looking on with envy as we offered the steaming concoction to a suspicious Candy.

“Mmmm, num num,” I crooned as I proffered the first still-warm handful of the concoction, making sure my fingers were out of reach of her teeth.

The taste test

At first Candy snorted, flattened her ears and backed away with a disdainful look on her face. Then, having second thoughts, she cocked her head to the side, squinted and made a second approach. Her nostrils flared and she inhaled the sickly sweet aroma of my offering.

Suddenly, as if motivated by some primal carnivorous urge, Candy attacked the contents of my palm. She eagerly gobbled up two subsequent handfuls with enthusiasm, licking my palm for good measure. The slurping and crunching did not go unnoticed by the two Brabants. They nickered and danced in their stalls, impatiently demanding fair play. “Where’s our share?” They seemed to be protesting.

“What’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” I said to myself, deciding to loosen the parameters of my limited research trial.  I pushed in beside each of the mares in turn and plopped a healthy scoop of the stuff into their feed bins. They made short work of the unusual ration.

Later, back in our kitchen, I stared into the now almost empty bucket and contemplated my next step. I knew that, if I ever shared this story, I might incur the criticism of horse huggers everywhere—one of which is my wife. Some might even say that I condone the abuse of lab animals. There was, I decided, only one thing to do. With a shaking hand, I scooped up a spoonful of the now coagulated mixture, toasted Sir Ernest and gagged it down.

So what did I learn from this experiment? Clearly, absolutely nothing. And I do not recommend trying this at home. It did, however, encourage me to spend a little extra time in the barn and eased a bit of my cabin fever on a cold and wintery day.