Our first Warmblood jumper was Caramel.
She was a good start! And what about CCF Yasur? He (Ocean I x
Andiamo) had a later start. He was a July baby, and he didn’t do the futurity because he was not ready. I brought him over to California in the summer. He did one four-year-old green class, where he jumped around. He’s really different from Caramel. He is
slow-minded and laid back. He’s taken longer to develop. He’s very brave and scopey. He knows where his legs are when jumping, and he loves it.
CAROL PARKER When did you start breeding? When I
started in 1995, I bred Thoroughbreds, mostly hunters. I had a nice Thoroughbred stallion we showed in the amateurs, and we picked up mares along the way. Caramel was our first homebred Warm-
Michelle and Carol Parker
Michelle rode in Grands Prix for years before her family started breeding Warmbloods. She’s currently competing the farm’s 2003 Holsteiner stallion Clintord (Clinton I x Caletto I), who’s sired young jumpers she’ll start training next year. Michelle operates Cross Creek Farms West in
San Marcos, California. In 2015, she showed CCF Caramel to win the six-year-old finals of the West- ern League of the Young Jumper Championships. Her mother, Carol, runs Cross Creek Farms
in Tucson, Arizona. Before the farm acquired Clintord, she chose stallions bred in North America such as Durango La Silla (Darco x Chin Chin) and Ocean I (South Pacific x Ramzes). CCF Yasur is a second-generation YJC contender. His sire Ocean I was sixth overall in the 1990 Western Regional International Jumper Futurity, and he placed second in the following year’s IJF Five-Year-Old Classic. The two mares she breeds are Nouska (Julio Mariner xx x Voltaire) and Aida Z (Andiamo Z x Karthago).
blood. Her mother Carisma 57 (Contango x Airport) was a jumper who was injured and so we began with her. The mares we have were Grand Prix mares, retired. They are top quality, already proven in the Grand Prix ring. I grew up with horses; my mother was a serious rider. Mi- chelle is a fifth-generation rider in our family. Is it rare to have your own “homebred” rider? I suppose
it’s probably on the unusual side. Probably people fall into it. What are advantages of breeding winning young hors-
es? I’m not sure there is an advantage. It’s something I do because I enjoy it. I think if you really want a ready-to-go win- ner, buy it. It’s much more challenging to breed. The advantage for me is because Michelle is such a nice
rider. It’s more fun to raise a nice horse. It makes it that much more rewarding. We imported a stallion [Clintord]. He’s a lovely horse and
a good producer. Those babies aren’t in the ring yet. He has babies in Europe that are showing. His oldest American-breds are three now. The downside? It’s the risk of all the things that can go
wrong. Just the developmental problems—at four or five you can find out they have OCD, or mental issues. It’s a lot of years to bring it along till they are five years old. We have two mares. In five years, you can have 10 horses:
foals, yearlings, two-year-olds, up to four-year-olds. All of a sudden you have a population explosion problem. We have a nice facility, but not the kind of facility where you can turn all the horses out into a big pasture. It takes a lot of manage- ment, shuffling from stalls to turnout. What about selling? You get torn, every time you have a
talented horse. About the time they’re doing well, everybody wants to buy them but you don’t want to sell them. Caramel’s owner [Dana Nemeth] was a customer of
Michelle’s to begin with. I have the best of both worlds—I sold the mare and have the money. She’s still in the barn
Michelle Parker riding CCF Caramel in the Six-Year-Old Jumper class at HITS Thermal Desert Circuit in 2015.
Warmbloods Today 27
Michelle Parker and CCF Caramel after another win- ning round at HITS Thermal Desert Circuit in 2015.
and Michelle’s riding her. Dana’s a wonderful owner, totally supportive. Does Michelle start all the youngsters? We struggled
with that. We found a cowboy in Tucson that does a wonder- ful job of starting young horses. He’s kind of a ‘horse whis- perer’ type. He gives them a start so they’re safe, then they go to Michelle for polishing. Our horses are handled all the time, so they have a lot of manners already. The cowboy has them 30 to 60 days, which is all they really need. We do that at three, then forget about them again, and then send them off to Michelle. And your opinion on the Young Jumper Championships?
I think it’s great. It gives you an incentive of something you can do sooner rather than later, so young horses are not com- peting against horses at all levels of expertise. They compete with others of their age.
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