PASS through any Irish town nowadays and it’s evident that any main street family business now has to compete with international chains and shopping centres. And then there’s the lure of online shopping delivered to your doorstep.

The same market changes and challenges apply in the breeding business where a local stallion owner often finds themselves competing with the European powerhouse studs.

Ivor and Olive Broderick bring both elements of local and international business together at Kylemore Stud, one of the busiest studs in the country and in a county that continues to produce the biggest number of foals per annum in Ireland.

Kylemore is on the crest of a wave this past week as KMS Clintland won the Puissance at Cavan last weekend and CBI Aldo, the top-priced Monart lot, is by one of their current stallions, Goodluck VDL.

“The whole ethos here is that customer service is very important,” maintains Olive, who like her husband grew up in a family business which provided a range of goods and services. “We had a busy pub, grocery shop, animal feeds, even a library and my father did the school bus run too,” she says, describing the Donnellan family’s livelihood in the east Galway village of Eyrecourt. Brodericks was a similar animal feeds and hardware business in Tynagh village.

Like many pony-mad youngsters – “I was always begging Daddy to buy me a pony” – she first had to borrow ponies from a neighbouring farmer and breeder, Jimmy Briscoe. Where to keep that eventual first pony, bought from Paddy O’Donnell, was solved when she asked local landowners Jack and Emily Howard for help.

“They lived on an old estate outside the village,” and having fixed up the stable they kindly offered, it became her sole responsibility to look after the new pony. “I’d cycle there before and after school to look after the pony. The water had to pulled up from a well by rope and bucket,” she says, recalling the daily chores.

“That first pony was later sold, I got on well selling him and bought a second 14.2hh pony for jumping. We’d go to shows in Rockmount or hack 10 miles to a show in Killimor or Tynagh, it never bothered us.”

The next purchase was a hunting cob, bought from Ralph Conroy where Ivor, whom she met at 15, was working. “Ivor’s brother Justin had a few ponies and rode horses for Pat Shaughnessy. Then Ivor went to work for Ralph, who was developing Milchem at that time.”

A GREAT LIFE

No Tynagh tale is complete without some story involving the late French horsewoman Chantal Deon, who made the village her home. “When I worked for Ivor’s dad, I did the breakers and Chantal always let me use her arena. There was a corral there too for the real hardy ones!” says Olive with a laugh.

She branched out during a gap year from secondary school after spotting an advertisement one Saturday. “I got The Irish Field, saw a job advertised for a working pupil at Suma Stud and went up to the telephone box on the street to ring. That was my first introduction to horses, it was extremely hard work but you learned how to do things properly there,” she says about her apprenticeship. A pair of steel-capped boots her father gave her, before leaving for Navan, soon wore out.

“Looking back now, I’m not sure if any of the kids nowadays would have stayed the whole year but you learned so much from Marily [Power] and Susie [Lanigan-O’Keeffe]. The biggest thing you learned was there’s a job for every horse. If it wasn’t going to make it as a show jumper, it could be trained for dressage, or sold as a show horse or hunter. There was a role for every horse.

“The other thing I learned there, and this is the mainstay of the way I am with horses to this day, is that the stallions had a great life. They lived in big, airy boxes, were turned out every day and often competed.”

That was the beginning of a new era in Ireland for keeping stallions, often previously confined to stables with limited turnout, and now seen out on the performance circuit.

“When I later worked with Tom and Linda Slattery, Michael McKeigue’s Coille Mor Hill was in their yard. I rode that stallion several times and never worried, he was just like one of the other horses.”

Suma Stud were pioneers in importing warmblood stallion prospects from Europe and it was to Holland that the young Galway couple found themselves gravitating to when sourcing their first stallions.

Olive and Ivor Broderick with their five-star stallion Tyson at the HSI inspections in March 2017. Photo Susan Finnerty

KMS RANGE

“How it happened was we had some broodmares gathered up, including a thoroughbred mare. There was no stallion in Ireland that suited her, she had scope and was a good mover but we just needed to improve the jumping technique in front. So that’s why we did a good bit of research on pedigrees and started looking abroad to see if we could find a colt.”

Rembrandt (“he covered a handful of mares”) was their first purchase, followed by Silvano. “We picked him out of 300 yearlings. Knowing now, what we didn’t back then, was he needed more blood in his pedigree for Irish mares. When he got mares with blood, he always bred something decent and got some lovely show horses,” she says about the Corland son who produced a number of All Ireland championship and Dublin winners.

Their current stallion roster includes a range of young and more established sires. Phil van de Wezelse Heihoeve, their Cornet Obolensky-Mr Blue three-year-old, will be aimed at the 2019 Horse Sport Ireland (HSI) inspections.

“He was to be inspected this year, then stood on a stone the day before Cavan and was hopping lame but he’ll be presented next year, along with Indigo VDL, who is competing successfully with Olive Clarke.”

The couple find that Irish breeders, unlike their European counterparts, are less keen to support younger sires than the established ‘big names’ and so generally tend to let their prospects build up a good competition career instead, before presenting them for inspection.

Currently building up such a performance career is Goodluck VDL, yet another sourced from their good friends, the van de Lageweg family. Champion at his Anglo European Studbook inspections, the stallion has just returned from competing in Belgium with Neal Fearon and is the sire of the Carroll Brothers-bred CBI Aldo, who sold for €45,000 at Monart last week.

Incidentally, Aldo’s dam, KMS Eclipse, was a home-bred mare, later sold to Raymond Carroll and she is by another of their earlier stallions, Ramon, out of the Alligator Fontaine mare, Kiss Kiss Fontaine, sourced in France by Ivor.

“Goodluck VDL has all the ability and has his first 1.50m and international shows done now. He is only seven so he’ll get a rest now,” they say about their latest prospect, steeped in French performance lines through his sire Baltic VDL.

Young stallion prospects are often sold on by studs so would freezing semen from them double up as a good insurance policy for the future?

“While we would love to freeze the younger stallions, it’s not commercially viable, as breeders don’t really use young stallions, via frozen semen. However we have frozen Swatch, Womanizer and Tyson.”

BEING UPFRONT

Tyson was sourced from Paul Hendrix and has already proved popular since his arrival at Kylemore. “For sure,” says Olive about their Numero Uno find making a name for himself. He covered over 100 mares in 2016 in his first season here. The Brodericks point out that standing stallions is a hard business.

“Sometimes official covering figures do not reflect the numbers actually covered, if there are outstanding fees. However, most studs are beginning to charge 100% of the fees upfront and that will rule out bad debt. It’s all upfront payment for imported, breeders have no trouble paying a foreign stud!”

This year, Tyson sired both the McInerney family’s Max Little Miss Perfect, the reserve champion foal in The Irish Field Breeders Championship and Thomas Conlon’s Lisbrogan Grace, the HSI eventing filly foal champion at Cavan recently.

“I think the breeders know he’s producing blood types that are really elastic. The jumping people like him, his foals just look like jumpers and the eventing people really like him. We’re privileged to have him and he’s the easiest horse in the world to have in a yard, just goes on the walker or out in the field.”

Tyson is out of Kicky Queen, by Voltaire and interestingly there’s a link to that great Furioso sire and his owner, the renowned Dutch vet Jan Greve, in two more Kylemore resident sires. “We made the deal for both Womanizer and Watermill Swatch the same evening. It was the best shopping trip, the best craic and the deal was done in a restaurant that was once Voltaire’s stable! We’ve known Jan for at least 20 years, you could ring him any hour day or night.”

The Heartbreaker son Womanizer, sourced from good friend Paul Hendrix, is proving another good commercial choice. This dual-purpose sire received a further boost with American rider Liz Halliday-Sharp competing OSH Cooley Quicksilver in the seven-year-old final at the FEI World Breeding Federation for Sport Horses championships at Le Lion d’Angers this autumn.

Bred by local man Alan O’Brien, OSH Cooley Quicksilver is out of another broodmare – the Creggan Diamond x Clover Hill mare, Kylemore Crystal – sold on by the couple.

Watermill Swatch, the sole thoroughbred stallion at Kylemore, is now enjoying a revival, with his eldest crops now making their mark in eventing. “There’s no doubt that winning the Croker Cup (2008) when he arrived in Ireland did get him up and running. Like all Irish horses, they tend to be late developers and then start finding their scope when they’re five and six. He now has his first four-star horse out of a crop of 10 foals that year.”

That four-star horse is Cleveland, bought by the Brodericks as a foal during the same successful Dutch shopping trip for his sire and Womanizer. Originally produced by local lad Cathal Daniels, the now 11-year-old and his rider Jesse Campbell were named this year as New Zealand’s reserve combination for the FEI World Equestrian Games.

One of his earliest Irish-born offspring is the Olga Scully-bred Master Swatch that has gone up through the European championship ranks with Stephane Stammschroer. The pair competed on two back-to-back Irish junior (Millstreet, 2017) and then young rider (Fontainebleau, 2018) teams.

A GOOD HOTEL

One of Watermill Swatch’s former stable companions was Huntingfield Rebel. It was an opportune time for an Irish Draught stallion in the west of Ireland, which all came about by happenstance. “Marily and Susie were getting ready to sell Suma Stud and Marily rang and asked would we have him.

“They knew he would have a good home here but not even in her wildest dreams would she think he’d have his busiest years.

“He had rocket fuel semen! I remember there’d be 30 mares at a time to scan in batches back then by our vet that year, Maria Diaz. She came over from Spain and is now one of the best reproduction vets in Australia where she’s married to the guy who runs Melbourne racecourse.”

And then there’s KMS Clintland who won the Puissance class at Cavan last Saturday. “He has a good hotel there with Nano Healy! We’re delighted for him.”

Uganna, Clintland’s dam, was another spotted by Ivor on his Dutch trips but initially wasn’t for sale. “You’d always have one eye on the mares in a farmer’s yard and we’d said if she ever comes up for sale to let us know.”

Bought afterwards, she also produced the Ramon-sired KMS Earl, first evented by Alan Briscoe and now competing in young riders classes by Daniel McAlinden, plus the 1.40m show jumper KMS Romeo in Germany.

Ivor now spends about 50% of his time sourcing jumping ponies and horses for clients, and works closely with Neal Fearon, who rides the older jumpers. They frequently source broodmares too for customers, including Dourwies, yet another by Corland.

Imported from Holland, she was sold on to Mayo breeder Joe Prendergast who hit the Dublin jackpot on his first attempt by breeding this year’s Mo Chroi four-year-old champion, JDP Dougland, ridden by Shane Goggins.

Prendergast’s champion, the Suma Stud-bred Suma’s Zorro and Katie Dinan’s Dougie Douglas are all by the Darco sire, VDL Douglas. He is another to enjoy a surge in popularity again. “He’s back with VDL in Holland but he’s always busy with imported semen and his stock X-ray well.”

The couple have a hectic schedule once the stud season is underway. “We’d generally start around 5am, the semen orders have to be done by 7am and you work right through until it is dark. Using frozen semen is really intensive and you may have just one straw of Cornet Obolensky or Diamant de Semilly to use.

“A single straw of Cornet Obolensky semen, for example, costs €750 euro, plus vets fees, so maybe over €1000 per try! Customers accept we would not use that straw unless the mare is 100% perfect. We know with frozen semen what’s good or bad, same with the fresh coming in. While we do a lot of VDL sires, once the semen can be imported into Ireland, we can do it.”

They caution against buying broodmares on paper. “You can buy pedigree but you don’t necessarily buy a good type of broodmare,” and at throwing “drugs and money” at a breeding programme. “Whereas the older farmer-breeder kept his mare on grass and covered her later in the year.”

2018 was a very difficult year. “The heat stressed a lot of mares and there was quite a lot of early embryonic losses, however we had over 90% of visiting mares in foal by the end of the season,” the couple explained.

Helping to achieve that remarkable success rate is a resident vet each breeding season, with up to seven other staff, including French students on an Erasmus programme. Also helping out on the 150-acre stud are their three children, Chloe, Luke and keen hunting fan, Josh.

“Chloe is in second year Veterinary in Poland. She often travels around with Ivor when he’s buying and vetting, and has a great eye for locomotion and bio-mechanics. I think that’s where her area will be. Luke is hurling-mad but is well able to look after and feed the mares in the yard and Josh knows the hunting card off by heart!”

The family were also at the recent Charity Pony Owners show at Millstreet. “We had a ball down there, it was a fantastic show and Josh won a number of prizes. He got a great grounding spending every Saturday at Flowerhill for a year with Kim Ides Walsh and Oliver Walsh, who taught him how to be sticky and ride on! Now he has lessons with Ralph [Conroy] and has qualified for the league final at Milchem.”

Mosstown Little Dun is his current pony – “I think it’s better to ‘under-pony’ in the beginning,” says his mother who is one of the East Galway Hunt’s joint-masters. “One of my hunt horses is from Anthony Gordon, by Cobra out of a Clover Hill mare.”

Another combination of European and Irish lines working together at Kylemore Stud.