Champion stallion at the 2011 Oldenburg Licensing, by Fürst Romancier out of a Donnerhall mare. Photo: Tammo Ernst
An Oldenburg Licensing in 1870
Story – Chris Hector & Photos – Silke Rottermann and Roz Neave
Christoph Hess’ Bundeschampionate Seminar is a brilliant idea. Rather than trying to get judges and aficionados to travel the world to an educational seminar, he has grafted his educational seminar onto the world’s most exciting young horse show. Brilliant, your target audience is already there, and real live competition for your judging clinic to work with.
This year’s seminar had an added edge for me personally. Earlier in the year, Christoph had expressed, with his usual over-the-top enthusiasm, how much he had enjoyed reading my book, Gotthard to Gribaldi. ‘We should think about you speaking at our seminar…’ I didn’t think any more about it until my travel agents sent me the seminar program, and there I was listed to speak, in the company of such German heavy weights as Oldenburg Breeding director, Katrin Burger. Now my usual means of expression is the keyboard, and I had never in my life had anything to do with power point presentations. Luckily, THM correspondent, and gen-Y product, Lec Bruggisser was still in Germany at the time – she of course knows all about power point presentations, and came along to hold the computer’s hand.
Photo: Silke Rottermann
I felt a lot better when I realised that my friend Katrin Burger from the Oldenburger Verband was about as nervous as I was, although she had the excuse that she was delivering her talk in English, and she was worried about the nuances of what she had to say coming across accurately. She need not have worried, it was an illuminating talk…
Katrin looked at one of the paradoxes of performance horse breeding in Oldenburg: while the majority of horses produced in these days of specialized breeding, were for dressage, in Oldenburg the majority of competitions, and competitors, were jumping – there are twice as many jumping competitions than dressage competitions. 54% of foals are bred for dressage, 33% for jumping, 7% for eventing, 4% leisure horses and 2% for carriage driving. In 2010, there were 1,200 classes for Riding Horses (15,357 starters), 3,016 classes for Young Dressage Horses (44,526 starters), and 17.344 dressage competitions (335,171 starters) while there were 8,260 young jumping horse classes with 170,654 starters and 33,883 jumping classes with 822,513 starters.
Why the discrepancy? It is easier to sell a dressage foal than a jumping foal, came Katrin’s explanation.
I guess most people are aware of the role of the stallion selections and performance tests, but there is way more to the German system than that. The Oldenburg Verband conducts a series of Foal inspections from the age of two weeks to six months – they are evaluated at foal shows; shows to select premium foals, stallion prospects and foals worthy to go to the auctions. At this stage there is no actual score because of the way foals can change so dramatically as they get older. The assessors tend to be on the generous side when awarding premiums because they want to help the breeders, so ‘premium’ equates to okay.
“Maybe on the day, one gait is not perfect, but with foals that can be a matter of luck. Just for that day the foal might want to buck and canter, when at home, the trot is really good…
“When assessing the stallion prospects we are very careful. Here we are talking of 1 – 2% so we do have to be careful, especially as the breeders feel that automatically the foal will go on to be a licensed stallion. In fact there are foals that are not awarded a premium that go on to be licensed, and vice versa.”
“Our auction foals are selected from official foal shows. Our licensing commission together with one breeding director makes the selection, and only 5% make it. We assess type, movement and correctness, but we don’t give a score, it is not fair to give a score to a foal and that horse has to live with that score for the next three years.”
Katrin outlined the changes that have taken place in the mare performance tests: “In the past it was 30% for free jumping, now it is 20%, we are putting this weight on the horse’s gaits, it makes no sense for 30% of the score for free jumping if we are assessing dressage horses.”
“The new studbook, Springferdezuchtverband Oldenburg International (OS), which is for the jumping horses, 45% of their mare test score is for free jumping.”
Champion stallion of the Springpferdezuchtverband Oldenburg International (that’s the jumping studbook) by Diamant de Semilly out of a PhinPhin mare. Photo: Tammo Ernst
We were also privileged to learn first hand the details of the new system for licensing stallions in Oldenburg.
“We have been thinking about the question, is our way of licensing still the best way? And we have made some changes. The vet check is more important than it was in the past. We have also introduced a pre-selection for the two and a half year old stallions in November. At that pre-selection, we have introduced lunging (only at the licensing!), that is a first in Oldenburg, but it gives a better chance to see how the horse moves. We are also using the Dutch system of free running the horse in a circle, that way the horse has to work harder and gets calm and really shows its movement. The young stallions also free jump, and are seen on the hard ground and in the walking ring.”
“We were happy with our mare performance testing, but wondered about the stallion licensing because in the past the stallions were not ridden, and a horse can change so much under saddle. So now after the pre-selection, the horses that pass go to a one-day test in the beginning of March. Once again we look at free jumping, and the walking ring, but we also look at the horse under saddle, and with a test rider. The horses that pass this time go on to the Licensing in the beginning of April.”
“At the Licensing, they are free jumped, run out in the circle, and shown in the walking ring. After the licensing, we have our stallion auction.”
“The licensed stallions then have to do a performance test before they become breeding stallions – in the past, they have been allowed to breed for one year – at the age of three. In combination with their results in competition, they do a 30-day test at the age of three, and they are then allowed to breed as four-year-olds. As four-year-olds, they need one Young Horse place, with a score of 7.5 or higher, in the FEI test for four-year-olds – and then they are allowed to breed as a five-year-old. If the stallion qualifies for the Bundeschampionate as a five or six-year-old stallion, then they receive life time breeding approval.”
“The owners of the young stallions have the alternative of sending them to a 70-day test at the age of three or older. If they pass, they once again receive life time breeding approval.”
“There is still a third option, and that is to qualify through competition, and for this they need five placings between 1st and 3rd in Klasse S (Prix St Georges) level, or higher. Once again, this results in life time approval.”
Katrin also outlined a fascinating picture of the Oldenburg breeding population:
“We would like to have a bigger spread of bloodlines, but ours is an open studbook, and the breeders look at the auction results, and then they select the stallion. Looking at the top auction horses in 2010, at the Spring Elite auction, most of the top prices were for horses from the Sandro Hit line: Sailor Moon (Sandro Hit / Rohdiamant) – €140,000, Sohn der Sonne (Sir Donnerhall / Sion) – €100,000 – and at the Summer Mixed Sales, Sansvieria (Sandro Hit / De Niro) – €80,000. In the Fall-Elite auction, the top price was for San Doncisco (Sandro Hit / Donnerhall) – €580,000 followed by D’Arcy Diamond (De Niro / Andiamo) – €165,000 with the Winter Mixed Sales, Franka Potente (Diamond Hit) – €53,000.”
All this is reflected in the following graph which shows the foals by bloodline born in 2007:
Out of a total of around 4,600 foals, we see far the largest number, just on 900 are from the Sacramento Song xx line, primarily through Sandro Hit and his sons. Again, and not surprisingly, the next largest group – just under 700 – are from the Donnerhall line. Then Cor de la Bryère, to prove that jumping breeding remains relatively strong, and that wonderful Furioso xx line through his son, Furioso II. Interestingly for all the talk of the dressage take-over, the Ladykiller and Almé lines produced more foals than the Rubinstein line. This domination of the S line no doubt relates to the ease with which the S line foals were sold at the foal auctions
It is also interesting that in the Oldenburg breeding district the proportion of Thoroughbred in the horse population has remained constant at about 35% from 1990 to 2010 despite the fact that out of a total of 349 stallions, only 11 are Thoroughbreds, and ten of them covered between one and four mares, while, Duke of Hearts xx, covered 13. This mirrors the study in the Hanoverian breeding district where again it was found that the proportion of Thoroughbred seemed fixed (and slightly increasing) despite less and less use of Thoroughbred and half-bred stallions.
Katrin pointed to the worrying domination of the breeding scene of just a few mainly un-proven stallions. The 20 most used stallions (5% of the total) covered 25% of the mares. Only three of the 20 were over ten years of age (ie had progeny under saddle over four years), only four out of the remaining 17, had their first crop of foals under saddle – which means that 13 of the most used stallions were totally untested when it comes to producing riding horses!
“So we have no idea of the rideability of the offspring and there is no way we can tell the breeders which stallion to use. Other studbooks have tried different ways to encourage breeders to use a greater variety of stallions but it hasn’t worked. For us, the market decides – and the market can be unpredictable. One customer – a leisure rider – came to our auction and paid €340,000 for his horse. He loved riding it, and wanted to be able to ride it at home.”
“There are a number of possible goals for the breeder, and some of them work in opposite directions. Some stallions produce horses with great rideability, but not great foals. What should the breeder be aiming for? A Grand Prix horse that will not be made until it is ten, or a foal that is easy to sell? Do we want manageable movement, movement that will never take you to the Bundeschampionate, but is easy to ride? There are many international dressage horses with average movement, but with good training they are very good at piaffe and passage – and that is another problem, put the same horse with two different riders and you will have two different results. I’m not sure you can breed a Grand Prix horse, but I am sure you can make them. Look at the top Grand Prix horses, they are all from the same stables – very few are made by amateurs. With pigs and cows it is easy to measure success because the goals are clear, but it is much harder to measure success in horse breeding.”
Fürstenball – another Oldenburg stallion to star at the Bundeschampionate. Here he is winning the 5yo title.
Not surprisingly when it came to questions from the Seminar audience, one of the first was about the dreaded OCD chips…
“We don’t license stallions with really bad x-rays, but what do you do if the best stallion has two chips? License him or not? The heritability of chips is 17-20%, is that enough not to license the stallion? We won’t license the horse if the chip is in the stifle, because that is difficult to fix, but the other chips are not such a big problem. I am not sure it will improve our breeding program not to license every stallion with a chip.”
“One thing we haven’t really looked at is the long term consequences of chips. We need to look over a five to ten-year-period to see what has happened to the horses with the bad x-rays. Most people are not so worried because it is easy to take out a chip, and there are plenty of horses that were thrown out of the auction, that went on to compete successfully.”
Katrin finished her talk with some wonderful videos of auction horses, and horses that had represented Oldenburg at the World Young Horse championships. Coming after five days of attentively watching the action at the Bundeschampionate it was just the perfect introduction to our seminar…