March 2008
What a fantastic year we have had. Our
broodmares have produced four fantastic foals
for us by Sandro Hit, Fürst Heinrich, De Niro
and Rohdiamant. Each foal has its own
attributes but we are thrilled with all of them
and would repeat every mating.
The
Rohdiamant/Stedinger/Ramiro colt, born mid
March, was the result of a serendipitous meeting
with his mother, Rasta, at the premises of
Clemens Graf von Merveldt early in our visit in
March '07 to Vechta (Old., DE). Clemens and
Andrea (http://www.gut-fuechtel.de) are our very
good friends who have looked after our horses
for us in the past. Rasta was being prepared
for her mare performance test and had suffered a
career-threatening injury when we were shown
her. She was black and as cute as a button! We
fell in love with her and bought her from the
Ralf and Jutta Groendahl, a lovely couple who
have been breeding from this mother line for
over 40 years. Rohdinger, we believe, is the
first Rohdiamant foal to be born in Australia
and together with Stedinger, Ramiro and Matcho
on his mothers side, this colt has a wonderful
future ahead of him.
The German Warmblood world, and especially the
Oldenburg world, is a very small family
comprising passionate and committed people who
see their horses as part of their families.
This is a very personal business where contacts
with the breeders are paramount. Everyone knows
everyone and can track all of the important
horses bred in the Verband. Our premise is that
the quality and depth of the mare-line is
critical to the breeding success and the
long-time breeders are the gate-keepers to the
world of classic bloodlines. The breeders with
whom we work are very sentimentally attached to
their horses. Selling one to Australia is like
sending one of their children away!
We
make a point every year of visiting the studs
and stallion stations whose semen we supply.
Last year, during both of our visits to Germany,
we spent time with the Meyer's at Dorum. They
were extraordinarily hospitable and were very
keen to give Australian breeders every
opportunity to use their stallions. Jens and
Suzanne have exquisite taste in stallions and
every one of their stallion line-up is worthy of
your consideration. They are endeavouring to
recover from the tragic loss of His Highness and
his heir-apparent, "Hampton", is rapidly showing
himself as an excellent replacement for his
father.
While we were in Dorum we had a chance to check
out the progress of Herzensdieb and Damsey.
Both young stallions are making extraordinary
progress in their development and training,
although Herzensdieb has spent a lot of time
this year recuperating from a severe illness.
We also saw the new-boys, First Dance, Rob Roy,
Hampton and Hendrix. Matched to the right mare
there is not one of them I would not use. They
are all impeccably bred and show spectacular
gaits and trainability.
We spent two weeks in Dorum with Meyer's last
year and they were most generous with their
time. Jens, Jane, and Peter cruised around the
countryside of Northern Germany looking at the
many fantastic newborn foals in Jens' records.
We covered more ground in Cuxland than we've
ever seen here at home. The farmers were very
keen and proud to show us their new foals, and
understandably so.
We
spent 2 weeks inspecting foals all over northern
Germany and finally settled on four fillies
whose pedigrees we felt would best improve our
Australian bloodlines. All are fillies will add
significantly to the quality of the Australian
Warmblood broodmare herd (2 Hotlines, 1
Herzensdieb, and 1 Fidertanz). However, first
of all they need to find their way to the
southern hemisphere and that has been proving a
significant challenge.
German data has shown the importance of the
maternal influence in the development of the
progeny. It is generally accepted that the
maternal influence on the phenotype of a foal is
approximately 65% (ie. the mother controls 2/3rd
of the outcome). Here in Australia we have used
some of the best stallions we can access through
frozen semen to begin to improve the quality of
Warmblood progeny. However, given their 35%
contribution to the quality of their progeny
this a long, slow road (It takes 15 years to get
to the third generation).
Our plan for the year had been to purchase and
import some superlative young stock from
Germany. The spectre of equine influenza shone
darkly on our plans as all horse importations
were suspended. This left us with four
weanlings stuck in Germany, growing rapidly, and
when the import window opened the cost of
importation had risen by 50% for these fillies.
Our aim is to breed from imported mares that are
from proven mare-lines in Germany or to use
local broodmares with excellent progeny
performance records. All of our broodmares,
whether imported or locally-bred, are broken in
and trained in basic dressage schooling. Only
those who show some talent for the dressage
discipline remain in our breeding programme.
Rasta, the mother of the Rohdiamant foal, is
only 4 years old and is busy rearing her foal.
However, in a couple of years she will be tested
for her ability in the dressage arena.
Fürstin
Grande (some of you may know her as Filigranda),
one of our other imported mares, has recently
gone into work to assess her suitability for the
sport. She was imported in foal to Hotline and
subsequently produced HB Filigree for us.
Filigree is a real sweetie and we look forward
to watching her reach her full potential as she
grows. She is the first (and probably only)
Hotline in Australia as his frozen semen was
proven difficult to work with. Fürstin Grande
had been broken-in in Germany and received some
basic education after we purchased her. She has
now been back in work for 3 weeks with Katrina
Bolmat after a 2 year break. She is green but
very athletic and is showing a lot of
potential. We will follow her progress.
On the human front, our son Andrew is in Germany
for 12 months on a student exchange program. He
is living with a family near Dusseldorf and
having the time of his life by all accounts. We
only hear from him sporadically due to his busy
social life! However, he is enjoying the
opportunity to maintain our contact with Germany
and our many friends over there. We will enjoy
catching up with him this year in Germany. Our
daughter Alex, who is a boarder at PLC, Burwood,
spent 6 weeks with a family in Germany early
last year. Alex attends dressage competitions,
when she can, with her current horse Gwaihir
Voltaire.
The four-year-old dressage championships are due
to be held soon at Dressage With The Stars. We
would like to wish two very special combinations
the best of luck:
-
Katrina Bolmat and HB Rotteufel – “Toy” was
Gem’s first surviving foal and is the first
Australian-bred Oldenburg horse to make it
such an elite competition.
-
Sandra
Norster and Ronja – Ronja was purchased in
Germany by Sandra on advice from Jane, Peter
and
Joern Kubelke. Ronja has
flourished after her arrival in Australia
and should be ready to show her best at
Werribee.
Good luck to all involved with
DWTS but special luck to Katrina and Sandy.
Talk soon, Peter and Jane
