information on performance, production and breeding records of both stallions and mares is more readily available to everyone as is a great deal of excellent breeding advice. In the last decade, a concerted and diligent effort by our own breeding community, our breed associations and the Verband representatives responsible for North America has brought a producing Warmblood mare base up to genuine international standards in many parts of North America. Therefore, today there are North American breeders competing with Europe in a global breeding market, producing foals every bit as good as any found in Europe. And what about developing and training those youngsters?
Two-year-olds at Branscomb Farm.
European imported horses became accessible to a broad range of North American buyers and riders. As the amateur hunter and jumper divisions grew to include more owner-riders rather than sponsored professionals, the demand for Warmblood horses that were easy to train and ride over jumps increased rapidly. European breeders and dealers were well organized and the dollar-euro exchange rates heavily favored our dollar. When George Morris encouraged his protégées to “go to Europe,” the rest of us followed suit or wished we could. Today, if you look at the roster of top Olympic level mounts
on the Canadian, Mexican, and U.S. teams of the last ten years, the vast majority are purchased imports—some at extraordinary prices. Go to an “A” or “AA” rated show on any weekend, and often the overwhelming majority of hunter and jumper horses will be imports. That foreign breeders, trainers, and young professionals produced these young equine jumping stars and captured our dollars doing it is to their credit. We are fortunate that our nation’s affluence has generally allowed us this luxury of “buying” our rides to the top. But can we afford this forever? Economic times and trends change. The value equation between the European imports and what you can find if you look at home has shifted. Now the value and the rewards are for those who shop at home first.
SHOPPING AT HOME First, breeders today are breeding world class jumping horses here at home. Even in its infancy, Warmblood breeding in North America found certain trends to our advantage. With the rise of American affluence and European imports, many states premium and elite jumping mares of extreme genetic and individual quality made their way to the U.S., Canada and Mexico as competition horses. Recent advances in equine reproductive science (such as frozen semen, artificial insemination, embryo transfers and hyper ovulation) have permitted global availability of shipped frozen semen from the world’s best stallions. This has allowed top competition mares to produce foals while staying in sport, has leveled the playing field and broken the European monopoly on great Warmblood genetics. With the internet,
58 July/August 2012
I readily admit that Germany has a better organized, youngster- friendly, and often less expensive path to train youngsters in their first year or two. But it doesn’t mean the horses are better. Linda Allen has been a strong proponent of improving our young jumper development programs in the U.S. to make them more accessible and conducive to bringing our horses to the top. But even with our expensive shows and limited professional attention on young horse development, somehow North American-breds are starting to emerge and win consistently against the hoards of European imports purchased in the 1990s and early 2000s. George Morris himself, a former advocate of imports, speaking at the November 2011 USEF open forum on show jumping (as reported in the December 11, 2011 issue of The Chronicle of the Horse) declared, “We have to get back to the horses we have in this county…there are Gem Twists out there.” Recent results speak for themselves. Cheryll Frank, director
of our own Young Jumper Championships (www.youngjumpers. com) reports, “Traditionally, only 25% of the horses competing in YJC were bred in the U.S., Mexico and Canada, but that number has been rising and in 2011 it jumped to 54%.” This past fall, as the best young jumpers made their victory gallop for the top ribbons on the final championship day (at the 2011 finals), thirty- six winners across three age groups and regions were jumpers born and trained in the U.S. (See top ten placing results on page 59.) Furthermore, at the German FN authorized and German directed 70-Day Stallion Test for sport horse breeding stallions (recognized by most of the German Verbands), in the last two years both the champion and reserve champion stallions at the test were bred in North America.
IMPORTING VS. BUYING AMERICAN-BREDS The cost of importing horses from Europe has risen in the last decade as the value of the dollar has dropped steadily from a high of $1.17/euro in 2002 to roughly around 70 cents/euro in the last three or four years. Despite Europe’s immediate woes, that long term dollar decline may be here to stay. With the costs of quarantine, veterinary export, airfare, ground transport, fuel surcharges and local board, it can now cost from $9,000 to over $20,000 depending on sex to bring a horse into the United States AFTER you have bought the horse. Then there is the issue of risk in the foreign versus local
Photo courtesy Kc Kelley
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