Esben Møller is the manager of the Blue Hors Stud the leading private stud in Denmark, and one of the leading private studs in the world. As we have seen over and over again, the modernization of the Warmblood has been achieved in many instances by breaking down national boundaries. Blue Hors stands some of the ‘best of the best’ German bred stallions, so I asked him in an interview in 2005…
Are you a breeder of Danish warmbloods, or a breeder of international dressage horses who happens to live in Denmark?
“We are international breeders but our main market is Denmark. We have both German and Danish stallions, but in this time of artificial insemination we can ship the semen all over Europe within 24 hours. We try to become an international stallion station because the more mares you get the more you make. We sell two thirds of our semen in Denmark, and the rest goes all around the world.”
Where did you join Blue Hors?
“I started in December 93. The first stallion of real quality was Romancier, by Rosenkavalier out of the very famous mare line of Mr de Baey. In his first year he covered over 200 mares, that was a record for Denmark – that year we covered a little over 400 mares in total.”
Don Schufro – the exceptional stallion…
“In August 1997, I became the manager of the place and I thought we needed an exceptional stallion, with good bloodlines, and very quickly I decided that if I could, I wanted to buy Don Schufro. I rang Paul Schockemöhle, and no, they didn’t want to sell. So once or twice a week I rang, because it is better to buy one right stallion than ten normal ones. So I kept ringing Schockemöhle’s and then I think they got tired of me. They said they ‘might’ sell him, so we went to try him out, and two days later went back again, and bought him. The first year he was in Denmark he covered 430 mares. And now all the world knows about Don Schufro and his offspring, and his own career. Today we are covering world wide around 1,600 mares!”
“From the first year of the offspring of Don Schufro, we got the stallion, Don Romantic, and he is a very good stallion. I think this year he will cover between 450 and 475 mares.”
The son – Don Romantic
“I don’t want more than ten stallions, that’s the ideal number. We train our stallions up to FEI and there is a big market for schooled horses. So if you have a stallion, eight, nine, ten years old, and maybe he is not so popular with the breeders – in the case of Future Cup he was not tall enough for our rider, Andreas – he’s a tall skinny guy, and he can make the horse look small. So we sell a stallion like Future Cup every now and then, because we always have young ones coming up. We buy around 30 colts every year, and when they are old enough, if they are good enough, we license them in Denmark or Germany.”
“We don’t really have broodmares, we might breed four or five foals of our own every year.”
“We buy our colts from all over from our stallions, and from Germany, to see if you get lucky enough to get a new super approved stallion – a new one from bloodlines we don’t have. That’s the main problem all over on the dressage scene at the moment. You have the Donnerhall line, the Rubinstein line, the Florestan line, Weltmeyer, and now you have Sandro Hit. But you only have these five lines. We have to get some new bloodlines… and everybody is trying to find the new bloodline. Right now it is dangerous for the breeding that the breeders only want to go to the famous stallions. The mare might not fit with say, Don Schufro, then the offspring will be really bad. That’s bad for the stallion, bad for everybody.”
“We do give our breeders a lot of advice, especially new breeders who have just bought one or two mares, we try to help them out.”
Is there any feeling that by using so many German stallions, that the Danish Warmblood will disappear?
“Danish horses have always been influenced by German breeding. If you look at the stallions, maybe 90% are German.”
Is that necessary today for a stallion to compete in the highest level of the sport?
“It depends. You can have a breeding stallion, and maybe he produces super offspring, but he himself is an average dressage horse. Then you may have a super super dressage horse, but he produces average foals.”
But the problem is that the breeders want to send their mare to the second one?
“That’s the dangerous thing. If you have a lot of hobby breeders, they look in the magazine, and they see Lingh is going very well, aah, we want to use Lingh – no matter how the mare is, no matter that they haven’t seen any offspring from the stallion. Then they get terrible offspring. With Don Schufro, it is not very often that you see a stallion that performs so well and also produces such good horses…”
When you go looking for colts to buy, what is the special thing you are looking for?
“I decide in the first 20 seconds if I want to buy or not. All the times I have said, it’s not good enough, then I come back, maybe it’s good enough and bought it, it has never been good. You have to see it at once. You see it in the stall, then the first four or five steps, that’s important, then I decide whether I like it or not. Maybe sometimes I make the wrong decision, that’s easy to do, it’s a hard business.”
You look at the horse first and then the pedigree?
“No you know when you go to look at the foal, you know the pedigree, you know the mother line, but it is the foal itself, it has to be eye-catching. If they are good, they show it straight off.”
Breeding dressage horses, you are not worried using a stallion like Sandro Hit who has never done an FEI test, and has never bred a horse that has gone FEI? And he comes from a family that says – I am a jumper?
“We have to wait and see, The oldest offspring are seven or eight now – they are still young. There must be some doing the small tour now, it takes time. One thing for sure is that Sandro Hit makes super types with great canter. What I personally think is that they have to be better in the hindlegs. The mare for Sandro Hit has to have super hindlegs, but we have to wait and see if they are good enough for top sport – if they are not, then we certainly have a problem because there are so many offspring.”