Pure Irish Draughts

News 2008

October - The girls are growing fast now and weaning, for Evie, is fast approaching. Both girls are now almost completely grey and are a joy to handle being very well socialised and lovely individual characters- I couldn't resist the cheeky picture below of the 2 of them. We sadly missed the Breed show at Lincoln this year as Tumbles had a nasty foot abcess which meant we couldn't leave her for the weekend so we keep saying- next year will be our year....fingers crossed! Tiddy returned home from stud sadly not in foal this year but as Pearl was very late we half expected it and Tiddy had lost alot of condition feeding her as she is a very greedy girl with the milk! We hope to take her back early next year and try her again. Amber on the other hand is blooming and we very much look forward to her second foal next year.

September - We have been lucky enough to agree the sale of a very exciting and stunning stallion prospect! 'Our' colt foal will be coming home to us at weaning and we intend to produce him and put him forward for grading as an RID stallion when he comes of age. He is everything we were looking for when we started our search- he has superb breeding being out of a champion mare and from a prolific family, he is from the last crop of a very rare stallion, he has superb limbs, movement, quality and above all is what we consider to be a 'perfect' Draught! He should mature at around 16hh with over 10" of good quality bone which is exactly the 'type' we wanted. As an added bonus he is also an outcross to all our own mares and fillies! It is a big financial and emotional commitment to try and bring a colt on for inspection but we feel passionately that we should do all we can to preserve this rare line and that this special colt should give us the best possible chance of achieving our goal. Below is a picture of him with his dam showing 2 'proper' Draught behinds! Full details will be added to the site once he is home with us.

August - We are very excited that Amber and Evie have qualified for the Snowford breeding championships at the Breed show in September at their first ever outing at the North West Irish Draught show! We have been absolutely overwhelmed to welcome our second pure bred filly foal into the world! Pearl was born 14th August at 5am and is a precious treasure that we never thought we would have as we were convinced that Tiddy was having a colt! Her show name will be Pure Lady Luck named after her granddam Lady Luck RID a foundation mare by Colman. We were very lucky to find Tiddy and have her graded, lucky to have got her in foal after many tries and very lucky to now have a stunning filly who looks to have inherited the best from both parents. Pictured here just a few hours old we cannot wait to see how she develops and it is lovely that Evie will now have a playmate to keep her company- in fact Pearl is technically her aunt and Amber is her sister!

July - A very exciting month for us as Amber and Evie are now back home- Evie is 6 weeks old already and Amber has been scanned in foal to Tobias Corbett for 2009 which is wonderful news. We have entered them for their first show in August at the North West Irish Draught show at Mawdsley and hopefully then the main Breed Show in September. Tiddy is at stud due to give birth any day now so we await the new arrival with baited breath and hope we have another lovely and healthy foal. Due to a variety of factors we have decided not to put Tumbles in foal this year as we have decided to look in earnest now for a colt to bring on for inspection. We are therefore limiting ourselves to 1 or 2 foals each year so that we can give equal time and attention to all our horses.

Evie update! - Pictured 11 days old Evie is really looking super. We know we are biased but she is stunning and already showing superb movement often beating Amber racing round the field at great speed!

June - Well she's here!!! Our longed for first ever pure bred filly foal arrived on the evening of 12th June at 11.30pm. A big black filly with a tiny star and pink snip to the muzzle- however the spectacles indicate she will in fact be grey. We have called her Evie as she was born on the eve of her dams birthday and her 'official' show name will be- Pure Tralee Lass. We couldn't be more thrilled and will excitedly be watching to see how she develops now. She is the image of Amber but also very like Raj's foals so he has defintely stamped her. Picture of her a few hours old with further updates to come.

May - Splodge did his first ever 8 mile fun ride with Auntie Tumbles and had a wonderful time- he saw plenty of obstacles and was not fazed with anything so we were thrilled with him. Also considering that he is not yet fully fit he was full of running and seemed to thoroughly enjoy himself. We have decided to give Podraigh a break from showing this year to allow us to concentrate on the mares and foals as there are only so many hours in the day so he is enjoying very much relaxing in the field chatting up his hareem of mares! Amber has gone to stud ready to foal down and be re-covered by Tobias Corbett. Her udder had started to swell so the signs are that she may not go to full term, we are obviously very excited as the time gets nearer and keep fingers crossed now for a safe birth and a lovely healthy foal, only 4 weeks to due date and counting!! So now the wait begins, Raj x Amber, what will their baby be like??? Colt or filly??

April - Quite a quiet month we are eagerly anticipating the foals with Amber in particular looking extremely large now with only 7 weeks to go! Splodge is commencing with some schooling work and is doing very well concentrating on his balance and asking him now to work with the correct bend. The most exciting news is that we finally realised it was 'now or never' and have decided to put our lovely Tumbles in foal this year!! We considered many stallions and it was a very difficult decision as we basically want a carbon copy of her but we know this will be very difficult to achieve! Whilst we would love her colouring again and considered many homozygous warmblood stallions to guarantee this, we realised that paramount to us is to replicate her superb temperament and substance immaterial of colour and ideally to have no foreign blood in this cross. We were very fortunate indeed that we found all of these things in the IDSH stallion Ballybane Shamrock who(even luckier for us) stands at stud literally 5 minutes from our yard in Cheshire so we will be able to prepare her for a walk through covering and keep her at home which is excellent. We were extremely impressed with his gentle temperament when we went to view him and the 2 together should produce a lovely foal with a super character and we hope he will add the refinement through his TB blood that we are looking for- also as Tumbles is Skewbald we still have a 50/50 chance of the foal being coloured so fingers crossed! Tumbles has been swabbed and will vist the stallion in May. The foal will technically be a 3/4 bred Irish Draught which is very exciting indeed.

March - The stallions have been viewed and our choice for this year is the RID stallion Tobias Corbett x Slyguff Hero. We were very impressed when we went to view him up in his new home with the Cornthwaites in Bowland and both mares have been booked to him for the 2008 season. We had admired Tobias for many years and had read much about him being 'the finest example of an Irish Draught' so were thrilled to have this opportunity to use him. He is now 22 years old but we were stunned by his super free movement and his tremendous bone and we would like to hold onto this bloodline before it goes. The picture below was taken on our visit.

February - The weather has been changeable going from very wet to freezing and hard ground hence we have been hit with not 1, but 2, foot abcesses- nightmare! All horses are now back sound and we are commencing with some fittening work now the evenings are getting lighter. Amber and Tiddy have come out of the winter looking(if possible) BETTER than when they went in- a tribute to excellent Topspec feed balancer and good quality haylage. Both ladies are looking quite large and James is convinced there are 2 colts in there! We are now in the process of planning for the new arrivals and going through the exciting time of selecting our choice of Stallion for this year. With quite a few fabulous stallions in the running, once we have decided and booked them we will publish pictures of 'the chosen one'! On a very cold Valentines Day we attended the annual Irish Draught Colt inspections and had a very interesting and exciting day. Highlight for us was without doubt the recently discovered 15 year old Bridgeford Ferryman who is a direct descendant of the rare Woodranger line. He was to us the perfect Draught loads of bone, substance, quality and with a fantastic temperament to boot. He is a type rarely seen today with incredible short cannon bone and exceptionally deep body- classic breed standard- and justifiably created a lot of excitement with the crowd especially since he had spent most of his life on a Welsh hill farm running with mares until discovered by his very lucky owners. We will defintely be using him on our mares at some point and we wish his owners all the best with him. I have included a rather rough photo taken on my mobile phone but I think you can see what presence he has. A further 2 RID stallions passed- Diamond Lodge x Gildawn Diamond and Blackwater x Enniskeane Prince and 1 sport horse Killarney Jack so it was a very good day. A full report with pictures is available on the IDHS(GB) website.

News 2007

October - Both girls return home and have settled down well as mothers in waiting! Amber is the first mare due on approx June 13th 2008 and Tiddy is quite late due approx August 17th 2008. We are including some astonishingly similar pictures of Splodge and his sire Grange Bouncer- they truly are two peas in a pod and there is no doubting that father has very much stamped his son! Splodge is continuing to do well riding quietly away and is confident and bold hacking alone and in company. As he is a big boy and still developing we are taking things very slowly allowing him time to fully mature into his frame before we commence any schooling work with him. We are concentrating on letting him see the world at the moment and to become fully relaxed and we hope to start more structured work in spring 2008 to prepare him for some novice show classes.

September - Both Amber and Tiddy are confirmed in foal to Ladys Tralee Raj for 2008 and we very much look forward to our new babies. We owe a great debt of thanks to Janet at Indigo Irish Draughts for her perseverance and knowledge particularly with Tiddy who we are very fortunate to have in foal at 17yrs of age after a gap of 10 years since her last foal- Amber! At the recent IDHS gradings both mares graded, Tiddy SID and Amber AID.

August - We had an interesting and fun trip to the RDS Dublin horse show a highlight of which is always the Irish Draught classes and the Irish Draught Stallion parade. This year the RID stallion Crosstown Dancer won and was champion for the 3rd time and looked wonderful, he moves amazingly for a 17yr old. He is by Flagmount Diamond RID out of a Pride of Shaunlara mare. Reserve champion was the newly approved 5yr old Mountain Diamond who was my personal favourite and I am sure he will be a 'Sire of the future' in years to come- he had everything I would hope for in an Irish Draught- type, substance, good bone and a beautiful quality head. He is by Welcome Diamond RID out of a Mountain View mare. Below are pictures of both of these stallions taken at the show. We had the wonderful news that Amber is confirmed in foal to Ladys Tralee Raj! We will collect her from stud soon and eagerly await our new arrival next year. Tiddy has been covered and we await her next scan with baited breath lets hope like mother like daughter!

July - After a slow showing year with a combination of injury, cancellation of shows and plain bad luck we managed to finish the season off with a win at Royal Lancs for the 2nd year running in the heavyweight hunters. This means we have qualified for the RIHS 2008 and the Blue Chip challenge. Now Podraigh has finished for the year we are free to concentrate on Splodge in some in-hand and ridden Irish Draught classes. Splodge arrived home from breaking and is doing well riding quietly away. The exciting news is we have just agreed the sale of Ambers dam Ballina Lass and she will be home with us soon. Tiddy is by Clontoo Lad RID out of Lady Luck RID(Colman). We were very lucky to be offered her for sale and just couldn’t refuse as she is very similar to Amber, with wonderful movement and is a complete outcross. More news and pictures to follow once she arrives.

June - We visit Splodge and Amber part way through their backing process. Splodge is seen here 3 weeks into his training and we are very pleased with his progress. He has been hacking out in company proving to be very bold and unfazed and his schooling is now coming along well concentrating on his straightness and balance. Amber has been a revelation, shown here only 5 days after being sat on for the first time she is happily working in walk, trot and canter after a hairy initial start racing madly round on the lunge at 100 miles an hour!

May - Splodge and Amber travel to Indigo Irish Draughts in Stottesden to be broken in by Janet George and her event rider Olivier. Both are currently doing well and Amber will now be put in foal to Ladys Tralee Raj.

April- We purchase our first pure bred Irish Draught mare, a 10 year old Chestnut mare Amber. She is unhandled and unbroken but quickly settles in well and forms an instant bond with Tumbles as they have a shared love of eating!