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[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by alatar

Where would one get the fodder for such a four-legged army? None of the inhabitants of Bag Hill were seen riding ponies. Frodo, when he considers whether to ride or to walk to Crickhollow, chooses to walk. Had he decided otherwise, he would have ridden *behind* a pony, not atop one. The few, if any ponies seem to be work animals and not part of the general transportation system.

Hobbiton seems to have been a fairly large settlement by hobbit standards, and I would posit that many of the things villagers would need for daily living would have been available nearby, doing away with the need for everyone to have their own riding ponies. One or two farms in the area to supply the animals when someone needed to travel into other parts of the Shire should have been sufficient. When one gets to more remote parts of the country we start seeing private owners such as Farmer Maggot, who kept at least two.
And Frodo's reasons for walking were for pleasure, and a last look at his home before going off into unknown dangers. I think I would have done the same.

Originally Posted by alatar

And for a community to produce ponies in excess would put stress on the system, and obviously, of course, attract wolves (as we see later in FotR).

Well, hobbits apparently had no lack of food under ordinary circumstances, and if they had sufficient arable land for the growing of crops, I see no reason they would have lacked land for grazing and ranching. As a matter of fact, grazing animals can have, shall we say, a fertilizing effect on cropland can't they?