Our goals:
We are striving to raise horses that are going to be an incredible horse for the amateurs rider although our horses will also attract the professional rider too!
Let me explain: Our horses will have quiet, trainable, tractable, friendly dispositions and personalities. This is very characteristic of the Friesian bred horses
and my experience has been that the Friesian is loyal and capable of being one's best friend. This is part of the reason that the Friesian is becoming so incredibly popular.
The Friesian also adds bone, substance and height to the more refined saddle horse mare. Many warmbloods are crosses of many different types of horses and most are
much like what I am producing.
We are crossing my Friesian stallion, Mario P, (Wander, Feike) on my Paint mares and Andalusian x mares. The Paint mare will bring in a big more refinement, shorter
backs, bigger and longer hips (where the power for dressage comes in) and a bit more shorter coupled for a more athletic horse. Paints are noted for their versatility and
this combination has been excellent for dressage, hunter, jumper, eventing, and many other performance events.
We are not trying to make the "Friesian Look-a-like" as while the Friesian is an incredible horse, many find them too "big" to really be as athletic at some of the
performance events. We are striving to make a tall (16 hands plus) with correctness, BIG movement (adding a bit more animation from the Friesian to give more expression at the passage and piaffe), incredible looks, color and athletic ability. We are having excellent results with this breeding program!
We want to produce performance horses that are : big movers, easy to get along with, calm minded, responsive with out the "hot", easy keeper (hence no TB's blood),
structurally sound as a result of hybrid vigor by opening up the genetic pool (as Friesians are noted for being inbred to a certain extent) and allowing for an excellent mixing of two fabulous horses and producing the near perfect cross (based on the fact that there are no perfect horses).
Our mares are specially selected with several criteria. Good physical structure, soundness in mind and body, correct movement, color (preferring homozygous mares), overall good looks (ie:striking looks, carriage, body type, movement), and adding what I feel my stallion needs to improve on and can compliment. Our mares are purchased for breeding and not just bred because we had a horse.
We also are trying to make our website a site to keep coming back to. We want your shopping experience to be a positive one. We strive to have many photos and video so you can SEE the horse. No straight out conformation shots then claiming that they have excellent movement. Nope, we take the photos and video to prove the movement. No guessing what our horses move like as you can see it clear as day in our photos and video. AS they say, a picture is worth a million words. My question is, "How many words is a video worth?"
Our videos are made in slow motion. We want the viewer to really be able to see how the feet fall. How the foal reaches up underneath itself and how it reaches forward and through the shoulder to the ground. We think our videos do a pretty good job doing that. If you have ever tried to video a horse yourself, you will appreciate the effort that has gone into the video. To those that haven't put the time into a video, you would be surprised at the hours it takes to put together a good one minute clip of video. Luckily for us, our horses have great movement thus it isn't as hard. We have to have the foal presentably clean, the lighting has to be perfect, footing perfect and the foal has to perform. We have to take a half hour of video per foal at least to catch just the right angles and then bring the video camera inside to the computer and take the two hours or so clipping the video and putting music to it. If we are not happy with the video, then we have to do it a different day as the foal will likely have worked off the spark it had. It is wonderful to watch our first crop of Mario babies glide across the pasture. We hope you enjoy viewing them too. If you have any constructive criticism, we are always happy to hear them. It is nice to have a fresh pair of eyes to see where their are areas needing to be fixed.
Our foals are truly very tractable and friendly. They mug everyone that goes into the pasture looking for scratches and attention. They are raised out to pasture 24/7 in a group including all ages. Mares, yearlings, weanling and our stallion. They are well adjusted and understand pecking orders and how to be a horse. They sleep in the grass and under the moon. We come out several times of day to visit them. When they were young foals, we had a "foal camp" to teach them all that we are friendly and they learn to lead and be handled by people. My friends come and help over several days. This makes an amazing difference in their understanding the place of the human and how wonderful we are.
Our foals are fed milk from their mothers, mineral salts free choice, grass and water. They are never pushed for FAST growth with grain and rarely stalled. We feel the best way to grow a healthy foal is to keep everything as natural as possible. They have access to shelter but generally choose not to use it.
If you are looking for a kind, big moving, well adjusted foal, we are producing them. Please do take time to look at our videos. We feel they are well worth it.
507-534-3311 Call for more information or if you just want to talk about horses!
