British Sport Horses

A view of Sport Horse Breeding

Our belief  is that we have some wonderful but under valued equine bloodlines in the British Isles. We are blessed with a rich diversity of breeds that have helped carve our history.

We appreciate the major requirement  today, is for good quality riding horses. The stock are obviously always evolving but the breeds can only fulfil modern demands if they are encouraged to do so.

Britain’s horse breeding  industry  is sadly overshadowed by a very efficient, often state run European horse industry. (Our home grown horses are not that fortunate.) The inspired individual, breeding  ‘genuine British horses’ has massive competition! The ‘ For Sale’ pages of Horse & Hound  speak volumes  in that they contain a far higher percentage of foreign bloodlines than British.

Social needs have literally sculpted “The Horse” and those of Europe have been much the same as our own. Therefore, be it  German, Dutch  or  Belgian Warmblood, they have all been required in the past to carry out the same tasks as our own warmblood horses, the Cleveland Bay and Irish Draught. All the above were bred to be large and powerful, but also athletic. Versatile enough to work on the land but also to provide a form of transport, both driven and ridden.

To develope the high quality sports horses we see produced these days, warmbloods have simply been carefully selected and their athleticism enhanced, mainly by using Thoroughbred or similar types of ‘hot’ blood.

We have all the raw materials sitting right here at home, yet many of our native breeds remain in the archives of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust. The irony, is that our ancient, quality warmblood stock,  was used by the European breeders as an outcross, to improve many of their horses.

Its the structured industry abroad, that is better than ours and not the quality of the bloodlines.

Buy British… we either use them or lose them !

Click on pic…