I had the best intention to keep this blog up daily--ha! That was before I was sucked into a whirlwind of visiting studfarms, looking at stallions and attending sport horse events. Not to mention finding time to eat and sleep. Germany is truly the mecca of the sport horse. Our group was comprised of 14 equine enthusiasts and two drivers.
We picked up our jetlagged tour members at the Bremen airport and started our tour the next day at Hof Bruening, where Hannes Bruening led us on an excellent tour of his sport horse nursery. The farm has been in his family since the 1400s and has been converted from a dairy into a horse facility under Hannes' guidance. Bruening raises many foals by top stallions for himself, but also for local stallion station owners who do not want to deal with babies. The foals are out on pasture with their mothers until after weaning when they are placed in large groups in an open, airy barn. They receive free choice of a mixture of chopped straw and a very dry silage. They are also fed a 6% protein pelleted feed. The foals receive daily turnout even when being kept in in winter. There are a well developed group and I saw nary a leg problem, so what seemed to me an unorthodoxed feed, i.e. silage, appears to be working well.
After coffee in the beautiful Bruening farm house we drove to nearby Gestuet Famos. This farm was built ten years ago at great expense. Even the house for the nesting swans that floats in a big pond was constructed of brick to match the style of the rest of the place. I was almost not joking when I said, "Oh, look, their duck house is nicer than my house." We visited several stallions including Van Helsing, Quintaro, Providence and the venerable Contendro I. What a charming gentleman he is. One of the best stallions in Germany, he is as kind and gentle as a stable pet. I had been to Famos five years ago and was shocked and dismayed to see it was almost a "ghost stable," with a handful of stallions and not much going on. Many stallion stations in Germany have experienced a similar decline. The global recession begun by several years of our country's "trickle down" economics and bank deregulation has trickled into the German economy. The horse business, according to one longtime horse breeder is off by 40%, which I would tend to agree with after seeing the changes since my last visit.
An impromptu drive up to Dorum, on the North Sea, to visit the stallion station of Jens Meyer and his wife was lovely. They showed one of our tour members some broodmares that were for sale, and then very kindly brought out every stallion for us to view. My favorite was Devereaux by Dimaggio. The brick stallion barn is airy and light and the stallions are all very happy living where they can see each other. Each morning farmer Jens goes out and cuts fresh green grass for them, a pile of which is in front of each stall--another interesting approach to feeding. It works wonders, as all of the stallions' coats are incredibly glossy and covered in dapples. It also really helps them produced the great quality semen Hengstation Meyer is known for. Jens is what we would call a real "corker" in America, very outgoing with a great sense of humor; he gave us many a laugh. We went to dinner with him at a local seafood restaurant where we watched locals sailboarding on the North Sea until well after dark. Jens is a respected judge of Hanoverians and has been in the business since he was quite young, and he shared a wealth of knowledge with us about the ins and outs of horse breeding in Germany.