It’s the million-dollar question all breeders ask themselves – which matters most: the stallion or the mare? On the eve of breeding season, David Shoobridge explores this very conundrum… and unveils two new stallions!

By his own admission, David Shoobridge spends hours and hours on his computer late into the night. Once he is on to the scent of something he fancies, he becomes fixated and dives deep into following the clues and hunting down the answers he is after. But he’s not gaming or binge-watching Nordic TV noir dramas, he’s following bloodlines.

Happily settled into his new property and business Salisbury Dressage at Lancefield, north of Melbourne, David is dedicated to producing ideal sport horses for Australian dressage riders. With two stallions already in play – Vittorio DS and Toto Nation de Jeu – he has exciting news to reveal: two more stallions from Gestüt Bonhomme have landed.

But it’s not always all about the stallions, says David, as he shares with us his breeding modus operandi, his fascination with bloodlines and the joy he gets from producing ideal sport horses in Australia for Australian riders.

EQ LIFE: With breeding season just around the corner, how many foals are you expecting this year?

DAVID: This year we are expecting 17 foals from a combination of our stallions, our residents Toto Nation de Jeu and Vittorio DS, along with a huge selection of pregnancies with frozen semen. Some mares will have multiple pregnancies, and other mares might be having a season off. So, with the multiple pregnancies, quite often if there are multiple breedings I’d like to do, we will first do an embryo transfer before putting the mare in foal. So one mare might have two or three pregnancies in a year; maybe carry one and embryo two, or maybe embryo one and carry one. And sometimes the mares won’t carry foals at all, so we have that opportunity to put them into the embryo program early each season.

“If you match the mare
and stallion well, then they can’t
do without each other.”

EQ LIFE: Do you think it is so important to carefully select your mare? 

DAVID: Absolutely. All bloodlines in Australia have really only been around since the ’80s commercially, and so years ago when the first Warmblood stallions were introduced to Australia – the Hanoverian stallion Domherr, for example, was imported by the Oatley family and he was bred to the Thoroughbred mares – we didn’t have access then to the quality mare lines we do now. Importing was a much, much bigger deal. It has always been a very expensive exercise to import a horse, but now with the use of embryo transfer we can realise that investment a little bit faster than in the ’80s and ’90s. We can justify to ourselves the added cost of importing mares because then we can fast-track the establishment of these motherlines.

In answer to your question, we didn’t really have the mare lines in years gone by to absolutely focus on mare pedigrees. We were relying on the imported genetics with the imported stallions and then came the imported frozen semen after that.

EQ LIFE: If you had to weight the influence of the mare line versus the stallion line, how would you weight this?

DAVID: I find this question quite intriguing because it’s really hard in any situation to give a percentage. Lots of people say it’s 60% mare, 40% stallion; some may say 70/30, some may say 50/50. I’m still learning about pedigrees and how far back to look, and where the powerhouse in the pedigree is – but I think it’s really important to look at the match. If you match the mare and stallion well, then they can’t do without each other. So it’s really hard to say, you know, this mare’s worth 60% or 70% and this stallion is only worth 40% or 30%, because at the end of the day we need both those ingredients. You can’t have one without the other.

EQ LIFE: On your two stallions, where are they at now in terms of their performance tests?

DAVID: They’ll do their performance tests through competition. Vittorio has been too young – he needs to do his performance test in the young horse classes, but unfortunately they don’t take 4-year-olds. So it has to be a 5, 6 or 7-year-old class. After that it is a Prix St Georges level test. The plan is for Vittorio to do the 5-year-old classes this year, which will hopefully grant us his full licensing, and Toto Nation de Jeu will go out in Prix St Georges.

“It’s really important
for us that we are
breeding sport horses.”

EQ LIFE: You mentioned how Vittorio’s dam has had all colts – four from memory. What do you think about this season? A Vittoria?

DAVID: (sighs) I know! I would have loved to have reported that Vittoria was on her way, but we did an embryo transfer with Ibiza and unfortunately we lost the embryo at 45 days. But that’s breeding. We will try again this season and we will try for a Vittoria! I have a filly out of her by Secret, who is now three years old and being occasionally ridden by [daughter] Annabel, so it’s only a half-sister to Vittorio. My absolute goal is to get a filly with the same breeding as Vittorio. I will keep trying until I do.

EQ LIFE: What are some of the main lines that you are currently breeding with?  

DAVID: Our broodmares have a good combination of Dutch and German pedigrees. I’ve actually got three mares by Johnson – it wasn’t a case of going out and searching for Johnson mares, but these mares happened, and I liked them, and it just so happens that they’re all by Johnson. They’re all from different motherlines.

Then another really interesting motherline is a mare called Foundina, who descends from a sister of Sandro Hit, Diamond Hit and Royal Hit. So the mare Loretta appears on the direct motherline of Foundina, which is exciting.

Then one of my own foundation mares who we bought as a two-year-old in Germany 16 years ago is actually from the same motherline as Blue Hors Baron. Blue Hors Baron is a young stallion by Benicio x Sir Donnerhall who is standing in at Blue Hors [in Denmark] and looks really promising. It’s really nice to see the maternal lines that I have in my program pop up around the world.

EQ LIFE: How do you look to try something new or keep ahead of the curve being here in Australia? 

DAVID: I think it’s really important to have an educated eye for a horse and look at horses through multiple lenses. Looking at a horse through its basic qualities, type, movement, conformation and obviously its temperament. Also, it’s important not to forget the family: look at what the mare has produced, look at what that mare’s mother has produced and that mare’s grandmother, and whether there are successful relatives. And then also look at whether there are similar crosses across the sport. Generally speaking, if there are, it’s a good pedigree match and we can hopefully see more representation of that bloodline in our sport.

It’s really important for us that we are breeding sport horses. They don’t necessarily need to look like show hacks, like they’re ready to win the Melbourne or Sydney Royal. But when we have our youngsters under saddle, that’s when we really want the quality breeding and the quality education to kick into gear and hopefully give their riders a bit of an advantage through the development of these horses.

EQ LIFE: You’ve got some exciting partnerships in the works that you’re launching soon!

DAVID: We do. It’s incredibly exciting that European establishments recognise the opportunity we have here in Australia. We’ve currently, as I said, got two stallions at stud and it’s been on the cards to increase the stallion part of the business. We have purchased two stallions from Gestüt Bonhomme. We have a stallion called DeLorean who is by Dancier x Weltmeyer, and joining him is a really well-known young breeding stallion and performance horse called Maracaná, who is by EH Millennium x Lord Loxley.

Quite often because I’m tall, I search for tall horses, and we have found that there is a gap for the riders that would like something around that 16.2/16.3hh mark that is a really rideable, neat type, and that consistently produces really nice horses. In speaking to DeLorean’s previous owners, he produces temperament, and he produces really good mechanics.

In speaking with the manager of Gestüt Bonhomme, he laughed and said, “David, we could put DeLorean over one of the dairy cows and the offspring would really move!” And I said, “Excellent! Sign me up!”

We want stallions that are going to improve the offspring that are being produced, and we want stallions that people are really, really happy with, that tick the boxes and that they can meet in real life. Frozen semen is absolutely wonderful and pivotal for my business as well to identify these young horses, but there is such a wonderful connection the breeders get when they come and meet the stallions in person.

EQ LIFE: How do you ride them all?

DAVID: With help! There are quite a few horses here. I’ll ride Maracaná. He is a similar style of horse to Toto Nation. He’s tall, 17.2 hands, and as mentioned, is by the wonderful Trakehner stallion Millennium. Millennium was ridden by our Australian Olympic rider Simone Pearce when she was riding for Gestüt Sprehe. We’re very grateful to Simone because it was her contact with Gestüt Bonhomme that led us to these stallions. DeLorean will be ridden by my partner Holly Stansfield-Smith. He’s a bit smaller than Maracaná and Holly has been an exceptional Grand Prix rider, so it makes sense to share the load!

Acquiring these stallions was an opportunity that came up, and I think that now and then if you really believe in something, it’s worth taking a calculated risk. My hope is that, if we work really hard, that calculated risk becomes a really good investment. Not only for my business here and for Salisbury Dressage, but to our breeders and the community that breed with our stallions.

EQ LIFE: Very exciting for Australian dressage to have these two new boys on the scene!

David: It sure is! Hopefully we’ll be marketing the stallions as of this month. They have only just arrived, so they are just settling in. They’re looking good and should be ready to start breeding any time soon, this month or next, depending on how they settle.

EQ LIFE: How are you developing the mare side of the business? 

DAVID: We have been really fortunate to partner with Bruce Dixon and Helgstrand Dressage. We’ve acquired another six mares who we will breed with frozen semen, and some will do embryo transfer while others we will put directly in foal to carry their own foals. It’s now an opportunity to really, really bolster the motherlines available to us in Australia.

It is not lost on me how extraordinary the opportunity is for breeding in Australia now. The combination of the mares I have bred and selected over the years with some powerful bloodlines in the new mares creates a lot of excitement! Just to name drop a little, we have a daughter of Edward Gal’s Dutch Team mare, Sisther De Jeu, a direct maternal sister to Glock’s Zonik, a sister to President’s Jack Sparrow, a mare from the motherline producing Serano Gold, Rosengold, Exupery and more, we have a mare from the motherline of Blue Hors Baron, as mentioned earlier a mare from the motherline of EM Loretta too… and many more!

EQ LIFE: I hope you have some more staff, you’ve got a lot of horses!

DAVID: We’ve got a lot of horses; we’ve got a lot of people as well. We’ve got a fantastic team here with great energy. There’s more and more work but the energy’s better than it has ever been! It’s really progressive and people can see the opportunities that we’ve got and the long-term opportunities. I think it’s really important to be able to focus and produce these horses, but also produce riders and help other people achieve their goals, because at the end of the day we are going to need a lot of riders for all these horses.

EQ LIFE: 17 foals this year; what’s your hope for next year? 

DAVID: I have done the list and it is a little bit scary! I need to really rein it in because I’ll get excited and spend hours in front of the computer looking at pedigrees and how pedigrees are matching – and looking at the quality of stallion versus the mare – the wish list! Then I start writing down names next to the mares and then I’ll see another stallion and I might input another pedigree, so I write that name next to the last name – and then I might find something else, and I write that again. Then I go back and try to make a shortlist, and if I can’t make a shortlist I say, ‘whoa! Maybe we’ll have to have one of each!’

I did that this year with the mare that stems from the Loretta motherline. I have bred her to a stallion called Baron, who I mentioned earlier, who comes from the motherline of one of my older broodmares. It was a little bit of a sentimental breed, which I don’t do very often, but I thought I really love this horse’s quality and it was a really good match for Foundina. It was just an added bonus that we have some genetic history in there. So, I’ve got an embryo from Foundina and Baron on its way, with Foundina going back in foal to Sir Donnerhall. I didn’t ever really want to breed with Sir Donnerhall himself because I thought there were lots of other options and he was really widely used – there are so many people who have bred with Sir Donnerhall. I once thought about buying a mare by him instead, but I didn’t ever buy that mare. Now, I’m looking at all these young stallions who blow me away, and so many of them are from a Sir Donnerhall mother. He is proving to be an incredibly influential and important broodmare sire.

This year we’ve got foals coming from many frozen semen stallions, for example My Vitality, who is actually a full brother to Vitalis, and then For Real and So Perfect, Diamond First, Sir Donnerhall, Baron, Jovian, Revolution and Franklin. So with those stallions added to Toto Nation and to Vittorio, we have got a really good group of pregnancies.

EQ LIFE: If you had a piece of advice for somebody starting out on the breeding journey, what would it be?

DAVID: It’s really important to breed with the best motherline, the best mare you can find. I use an analogy when I’m explaining it – putting your mare in foal and getting an offspring is like renovating a house. You wouldn’t build a million-dollar house on the stumps of a fibro shack. Those stumps are really the foundation of the house. Those stumps are our broodmares; the broodmares are the foundation of our breeding program. It’s really, really important to breed with the best quality mare you can. And if you don’t own one you might want to lease one or buy an embryo or do a designer foal, or rather than breeding every year with a mare you might want to save up and breed every three years to afford the mare that will give you the base that you need. EQ

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE TO READ:

David Shoobridge’s Happy Equilibrium – Equestrian Life, March 2023