Island Life Magazine Ltd August/September 2011 | Page 106

EQUESTRIAN

Breed or buy
ROBERT BOOTH BHSI

EQUINE TRAINER

Ceana as a foal

Ceana at 4 years old after turning grey

To breed or buy a young horse
is a question many people are
faced with at some time.
The idea of having a foal
from your mare and producing
it into a superstar is fantastic,
but unfortunately not always
realistic. When considering
breeding try not to be too
sentimental. However fond of
your mare you may be, don’t
use unsound mares or those
with poor conformation or
temperaments as this only
adds to the numbers of poor
quality young stock. Secondly,
do you have suitable facilities
and time? From conception to
riding age is four years, and if a
young horse can find anything
to injure itself on within that
time you can be sure it will.
Thirdly, do not think
homebred is the cheap option.
Remember four years of keep
with stud fees, veterinary
and blacksmith fees, without
allowing for your own work,
you could probably go and buy
a nice three year old for the
same price without any of the
risk involved.
If you do decide to go ahead
and breed give plenty of
thought to the stallion. Use
a proven stallion with good
bloodlines for their chosen job
and always use a stallion that
has been graded by their own
breed society.
Using graded stallions not

Rodgebrook Horses
TEL: [phone] www.rodgebrookhorses.co.uk

106

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only gives a standard of
soundness, conformation and
performance to expect, but
also means your foal will have
the correct paperwork required
by many disciplines for
competing. There is nothing
more rewarding than a lovely
foal that grows into the horse
you always wanted.
One young horse we have
recently had in to break is
Ceana, a lovely four year
old mare bred by Bumble
Hollingshead. Ceana was bred
with showjumping in mind and
is out of a mare Duncaring,
who Bumble used to showjump
and is by a stallion called Cevin
Z.
At first all was not plain
sailing as the first attempt to
put Duncaring in foal was not
successful but the following
year she took using frozen
semen at West Kingston Stud.
Born on June 7, 2007 Ceana
has now had three to four years
of growing and learning about
handling, leading, tying up,
picking up feet, rugs, tack,
lunging etc.
It seems like a very long wait
for the young horse to mature
to riding age, but after a few
weeks work you have a grown
up ridden horse. Ceana now
has hopefully a great future
ahead as a competition horse,
and has shown a lot of promise
in her early work.