Well it's Spring time at Sandhills and that means the breeding season, for horses that is, as the minister for family planning at Sandhills has made it perfectly clear that her days as a ‘brood mare’ are most certainly over.
It's the time of year where two and three year olds are brought in from agistment at Belltrees (the home of the White family) or Simon and Carlene Barton's property at Wellington. We usually won't have seen them since they were yearlings so it's always exciting to evaluate them again. Comments like 'wow, that one looks like it will jump' or 'look at that trot' or 'that is going to be an Olympic Games horse', flow like one of Heath's Auction of the Stars catalogues.
Sandhills Ava
Spring time also means our mares are foaling and this year we've got five on the ground so far and a couple more to come. Breeding eventers is not a common practice in Australia but at Sandhills we feel it’s something Australian event riders need to start to consider seriously. Breeding a horse with a pedigree to do your job is a huge advantage and is practiced by all disciplines across the globe, our dressage and show jumping riders are on to it and we can't get left behind.
Sandhills Brillaire, owned by Keith and Julie Osborne, was bred to event and is heading to Adelaide CCI4* this month
Photo: www.maineventphotography.com.au
It's more than twenty years ago since we started breeding horses for eventing. The main reason was that the only way we could see ourselves riding the very best horses was if we bred them, because there was no way we would be able to afford to buy them. Once a good horse is three or four it will be out of most people's price range. It's also worth noting that Australia's three gold medals came while we were still riding the long format in which our thoroughbred race horse was superior. Nowadays other nations seem to have better access to quality purpose bred horses for the modern format. Now before you start yelling about thoroughbred versus warmblood, I'm still a huge thoroughbred fan but, the sport has changed and the emphasis on the dressage and show jumping is much greater now so, it's the re-training of a racehorse that I'm not a fan of anymore.
A great example of home breeding can be seen from Prue's mum (Jennifer) who began breeding ponies for her girls, the girls grew and so did the breeding program. Jennifer Cribb purchased a stallion called Harry Lime who was bred by Alan Williams - an accomplished show jumper himself (and incidentally breeder of Shane Rose's Taurus) and began to use him over her mares. Felicity Cribb, Prue's sister, went on to ride for Australia at WEG 1994 on a horse her mum bred called Carmody St, who was by Harry Lime. Felicity also placed in the top ten at Badminton and Burghley on Carmody St. A more recent example is of course Megan Jones who is one of Australia's most successful riders and has done it on her Stud’s purpose bred horses.
So this year at Sandhills we will use probably three different stallions:
Staccato looking pretty good on his 20th Birthday
Staccato, who we bred twenty years ago still stamps his progeny with stunning looks, great paces and jumping ability and, of course is the sire of Panamera who won Adelaide CCI4* last year. Actually Panamera's mother was a thoroughbred called Tuesday, who was one of our first broodmares. Her first two foals were colts and were quite difficult so we sold her in foal and then she had two fillies, with the second being Panamera.
Regardless is a 5yr old warmblood stallion owned by Felicity Cribb and competing at EvA105 level and is simply stunning. We will cover some of our Staccato mares with him this season and already have some lovely youngsters by him.
Sandhills Craftsman who is 7/8 tb and passes on the TB lung capacity that we are looking for. He is by Croftlea Artizan, a New Zealand thoroughbred who represents the famous Aberlou line and he is out of a full sister to Sandhills Brillaire who is heading to Adelaide in the CCI4*.
At the time of writing we are only three weeks from Adelaide and are focused on getting Wendela Jamie owned by Henry and Helen Hicks and Sandhills Brillaire who is owned by Keith and Julie Osborne to their first four star event (both of these horses were purpose bred for eventing).
Another homebred horse Sandhills Piper, now owned by Pam Laidlaw
So I encourage you to take the plunge and breed your next superstar. I promise you, once you've been involved in choosing the stallion for your mare, the birth of the foal and the journey that foal will take you on by owning that horse becomes a whole new experience.
Hope to see you at Adelaide
Craig
