Dressage Stallions Available to North American Breeders and Research

I've just spent the last two hours dutifully re-researching every KWPN-approved stallion available to North American breeders via fresh cooled or frozen semen.  If you don't have a membership to the KWPN or haven't paid for access to the KWPN Stallion Data Base, it's worth it.  There isn't a stallion available that I haven't either researched before, seen in person, and/or attended his foal inspection, but my OCD won't allow me to make my breeding picks until I've reloaded the available data into my somewhat addled brain.

The good news is that there are more stallions available to us than ever.  The bad news is that the fresh-cooled options are still woefully lacking.  The issues remain the same:  Good KWPN-approved stallions are expensive; expenses to import, campaign, market, and maintain a stallion are prohibitive; and, the breeding base is still to small to warrant this kind of investment for all but the uber wealthy. There are some short-term and long-term approaches we could take to rectify this.

Our jury has already taken one of these steps by licensing a new dressage stallion for us, Gaspard de la Nuit DG. Although I'm not crazy about the mareline on this horse, at least the pedigree is interesting and we have another fresh-cooled option.  From what I can tell, he should bring suppleness and a super canter to his foals.

Carol just asked me what I'm writing about.  Her response, "Ooh, don't diss people with stallions!"  I'm not.  I swear.  We Americans are so over-sensitive about our horses.  I've just spent two hours reading honest, published descriptions of approved stallions, their plusses and minuses during testing, the strengths and weaknesses of their mothers, and the positive and negative effects they initially presented through their foal collections.  Unless we adopt a similar pragmatic, honest approach to the evaluation of our breeding stock, North American breeders will always be behind our Dutch counterparts. There is no one more critical of my horses than me.  Of course, there's also no one more enthusiastic about my horses than me.  It's this kind of dichotomy that allows me to keep our program growing and improving.

Another step our organization could take to help this situation is by doing something that, at first, may seem counter-intuitive to providing more fresh-cooled options.  At the end of each keuring season, our jury could identify one or two traits that need improvement in our breeding population, then the organization could facilitate the bulk purchase of frozen semen from a stallion that reliably contributes what we're lacking.  By making one or two stallions available to North American breeders at a reduced rate, we would systematically improve our breeding population and, in the long term, have a better chance of producing more approvable stallions.  In Holland, the theory is that the KWPN responds to the needs and wishes of the breeders.  As I've quoted before, Wiepke Van de Lageweg says it the breeders' job to set the direction for the KWPN, not the other way around.  We're not in the same position as breeders in Holland, however.  We don't have the broad knowledge base, access to venues where we see horses competing every weekend, nor options for genetic diversity.  We need our organization to lead more in this area. I'm not advocating that the KWPN-NA become a frozen semen broker, but there are ways our office could facilitate more options for us. Why couldn't our Stallion Owner Committee partner with its Dutch counterpart and help provide this?

We could also have our own "Erkend" system in North America.  If our jury and directors were to work with the KWPN to evaluate all Grand Prix competitors approved in other studbooks in North America, and already available via fresh-cooled semen, with the purpose of finding two or three that could contribute to our breeding population specifically, we could end up with two or three more fresh-cooled options.

Of course, my favorite option is still a co-operative venture similar to DBNA or WBNA through which breeders with a vested interest in improving not only their own programs but the strength of the breeding population as whole get together and invest in leasing, buying, and investing in stallions and stallion prospects. Now that the Euro is plunging, the timing is better than ever for this kind of venture.