H&C

5
Mar
2010

2 Comments

New broodmares, saddlers and a nasty fall

Stallions' competition commitments need consideration when ordering semen

"Month end fast approaches and with it comes our March advertising deadlines; Horse Deals Magazine being the vehicle of choice for many years. They now have a business profile on us and our horses, so the additions and deletions to the stud advert was a smooth procedure thankfully! The big decisions lay with which horses to use for the youngstock promotions - this sparked great discussions relating to our long term breeding goals.

The sport horse breeding industry is ever developing - at the most basic level the horses age, inevitably their breeding life comes to a natural end and suitable replacements need to be found.

With the knowledge that two hfd broodmares will be foaling at the grand old age of 20 this year, we sourced and purchased two new breeding mares - one a KWPN homozygous black Prok (a predicate given by the KWPN studbook to mares who have been x-rayed and passed their stringent requirements) mare who is in foal to the Dutch champion stallion Ampere who is due in just three weeks! The other is a KWPN homozygous Tobiano mare who is in foal to our elegant Oldenburger stallion "Santana hfd" and is due in May. These purchases give us the added luxury of colour homozygosis, along with the predicates and breeding we insisted upon.

But a dilemma was to emerge. One of our young mares who we have just finished backing - and who also has the highly sought after Prok predicate - had a DNA test ahead of a sport horse and brood mare sale and she turned out to be homozygous black too! How rare it is to find one Prok mare who is homozygous black - but to have two is unknown...so do we sell her and bring in much needed revenue or do we keep her? It was a difficult enough decision whether or not to present her for sale holding the prestigious Prok predicate and now we know she will always have a black/black bay foals, we find ourselves facing a real challenge with income vs. quality with this hard to find business asset! More decisions and number crunching will need to be done!

We had a visit from both my saddlers this week. Peter Smithson is my local saddle fitter. He gives my horses year round attention and comes at a moment's notice. He is very aware of how important it is to always have correctly fitting tack. My saddle maker Jan Hulsebos made the trip over from Holland bringing an interesting prototype for me to trial. When competing in France last year many european riders were using new saddles which sport the knee rolls out side of the saddle flap. Jan, always enthusiastic to embrace new ideas and progress, likes to work with riders at high levels when researching new products, so I have a very interesting project to trial and report my findings on his prototype.

On Tuesday I had a fall from a young horse shattering the floor of my eye socket. I don't often fall off, but this time a gave myself a good clonk on the face. It wasn't the youngster's fault - a surprised leap caught me off balance and I fell awkwardly. The resulting CT scan means that on Sunday I will undergo an operation to fit some metal work to the damaged eye socket. This seems to have been a bad week for International Grand Prix riders the world over, as American International Courtney King took a fall from a youngster and was airlifted to hospital with a fractured skull, plus the French rider Silvie Correliue was involved in a horrific car crash which she sadly did not survive. I consider myself very lucky. God bless and peace be with these people.

With facial surgery on the horizon, I decide to lift my spirits and plan my first competition for Mooiman hfd. We will make our 2010 debut at Saumur CDIO/CDI in April and I am already looking past Sunday and planning my trip. Maybe I can get the much needed score to complete our WEG qualification...as always when confirming competition dates, foaling dates have to be considered and breeders who have submitted nominations need to be notified that frozen semen only is available these dates due to the stallion's competition commitments. They can plan their covering accordingly and if fresh semen is preferred then those dates can be avoided in advance - a small sacrifice when you consider the implications for the CV of the offspring who can claim they are direct descendants of Internationally successful parents."