Dutch Stallions in North America

My friend Meghan just posted on FB about her frustrations with breeding with frozen semen so far this year, and how she's just covered her very well-bred jumper mare with a dressage stallion because she just can't afford to keep breeding unsuccessfully with frozen or continue to pay collection and shipping fees for a fresh-cooled stallion. How many of us have been in this situation? The lack of quality KWPN-approved stallions, available at a reasonable price with fresh-cooled semen in North America, is probably the single biggest contributing factor to the stagnation of our studbook. We need more stallions, to incite more breeding, to increase our membership, to increase our breeding pool, to get new people involved--all in order to grow a healthy, non-incestuous organization and breeding population. At this point in time, we would be better off without a North American office or studbook and just use the Dutch office for registrations, reporting, keuring and event organization, and promotion. This move might also, finally, get our horses recognized in the KWPN breeding indices. For how many years has the membership been asking for our mares and offspring to be recognized and recorded within the KWPN system? For over 12 years. Given our current state of technology, you can tell me it takes over a decade to make this happen? Ridiculous. It's purely inefficiency and lack of direction. If our membership were as strong as our Dutch counterparts within the KWPN, or if we had enough stallions to have a stallion owners lobbying group, changes as simple as combining data bases wouldn't still be unaccomplished after 12 years. The KWPN-NA is a top-down organization. The KWPN, although beset with its own political issues, is very much a member-driven organization. OK. That's a vent that took me a little off topic. We don't have more KWPN-approved stallions in North America for a number of reasons: One, KWPN-approved stallions are more expensive than German-approved stallions; two, our breeding base is smaller, so the opportunity to recoup the investment of purchasing one of these stallions is less assured; three, promoting and competing a stallion is significantly more expensive in North America than it is in Europe; four, the number of top riders who can successfully stand, train, and compete a breeding stallion are few and far between; five, the KWPN does more to promote stallions standing in Holland than the KWPN-NA does to promote stallions standing here. These are formidable odds for a potential stallion owner. The only way Dutch breeders are going to have access to a larger selection of quality stallions in North America on a consistent basis is if we form some kind of collaborative effort. Otherwise, we're bound by a large organization that is delighted to promote its frozen semen and a small organization that ineffectively promotes what few stallions it has available.