THE late Jack Powell’s astute observation often comes to mind looking at the sea changes in Irish sport horse breeding. “Nothing generates as much adrenalin as a debate on horses. We’re all experts, we all have our own opinion and we all think we know more than the other fellow!” was one of many memorable quotes by the renowned Nenagh veterinary surgeon in his 2010 feature in The Irish Field.

Those changes are widely seen in the west with a substantial number of farmer-breeders opting out or scaling back. Alternatively, the Connolly family from Cummer, near Tuam, Co Galway, have upped their game to become one of the most commercial and successful sport horse foal producers in the west. From sales-topping foals, 1.60m performers and most recently, a Lanaken silver medallist, the family have risen to the challenge of breeding the next generation of Irish performers.

It has taken a couple of generations and changes of fortune though to reach this level. Patrick’s wedding present – a young Uncle Walter gelding from his father – proved to be a good jumper. “He could have got a lot of money for him at the time but he was listening to people saying he was going to get more and more and he didn’t,” said his son Shane about the horse that then lost all form.

Swapped by Pat Cash for a three-year-old, that promising youngster was broken in by Owen Horan. “Owen was doing the show jumping for us, the horse was going really well and was turned out for a break and broke a leg in the field. So that was a bad start to the horses!”

“After bad luck comes good luck” proved true and from that inauspicious start, the family turned a farm sideline into a business.

“My father had horses and we always had an interest in them. We do contract work as well, so my main interest was machinery. I really loved machinery at the time but that’s now changed to horses,” explained Patrick.

“My father would have sold an odd foal but mostly yearlings and two-year-olds at Ballinasloe. He wouldn’t breed a lot, just one or two foals. One Irish Draught mare used to breed a lot to Jamie Boy. He’d always be saying ‘Never get married to any of them!’ Mares or anything, he’d always sell if there was a customer. That was his way of doing things.”

MIDNIGHT BUYS

Patrick’s way of doing things back then was buying youngstock to sell as three-year-olds in Goresbridge. “Dad used to go to Cork and buy yearlings and two-year-olds, in September, October time and keep them over the winter and sell them on the following year,” recalled Shane. “He actually bought his first two Clover Hill mares down in Cork, on the side of a mountain in Kilnamartyra, at 12 o’clock at night by the lights of the lorry!”

The vendor was the late Timothy Kelleher, who bred Rich Fellers’ good mare Colgan Cruise that earned the Macroom man an Irish Horse Board breeders award in 2007. “Timmy was a grand man. He used to cover a lot of mares with Clover Hill, he got on great with Philip Heenan,” remarked Patrick.

Those two mares, Cummer Clover and the purebred Draught Clover Coin, joined the growing broodmare herd on their Tuam farm. “The first broodmare was Cummer Glory, by Glacier Mint. One of the first times I went to Millstreet, I’d seen Cruising jumping there with Trevor Coyle so came home and covered her with him. She was scanned in foal with twins, we tweaked one and the other one was Cummer Cruise. We were kind of getting into show jumping breeding at that time,” he continued, describing how some of their earlier flagbearers were of similar Cruising-Clover Hill lines to Colgan Cruise.

“We had another Clover Hill mare Doolin Clover that we bought from Danny Considine. She was covered with Cruising and she bred Warrenstown Well Aware. We sold her as a foal at Goresbridge, she was the first foal we sold there.”

Soon the CSF prefix, standing for Connolly Stud Farm, began to make a mark. “Cummer Clover bred the event horse Killossery Ringwood and she’s also the grandam of CSF Vendi Cruz that Shane Breen is jumping. And then there was WCE Falco, I think he was sixth and seventh in two European junior championships with Lucinda Roche. He was a Cruising horse off one of the Darco mares.”

Which leads into their long association with Darco broodmare daughters. Falco’s dam was Vis Ta Vie Van De Farm. Regarded, Carlsberg-like, by the Connollys ‘as probably the best mare we had. She bred WCE Cruco too. Martin and Lisa O’Dea would be very good customers too and buy all her foals, except one filly.”

THE DARCO SIDE

How did the switch to imported mares, chiefly Darco daughters, begin?

“We never actually bred a foal off Darco but the first mare we bought was from Owen Horan. Owen was looking for a stallion in Belgium and Dad said if you see a Darco mare, he’d be interested and he bought a two-year-old filly. That was Angie Van Pamael.”

Owen also tipped them off about another he spotted at Cavan. “Owen rang Dad and said would we have an interest in this Darco mare, Ohio Girl. He ended up jumping her in Premier Grand Prix classes the following year. Once he sat up on her in his yard, he said to Dad, ‘We’ll jump her before you bring her home’ and he clicked with her straightaway.”

Not every performance mare is guaranteed to follow on as a broodmare as the Connollys found with Ohio Girl. “We got one foal off her. She was very difficult to get in foal, we got her in foal to Cruising and she lost it.”

They had better luck with another Darco import, Princes, a full-sister to John and Robert Whitaker’s Quinten. “She bred Paddy’s Dream Z who jumped to 1.50m. Then we have an Ars Vivendi daughter of hers, he was lucky enough for us as a stallion. We’ve three or four of them breeding and people who have their foals are very happy with them. They think they’re going to jump to a high level, be nice and easy to ride and sell on.”

Twenty foals were produced last year from their current 25-strong broodmare band. “We kept three fillies,” continued Shane. “We don’t really keep foals unless we’re thinking of replacement broodmares. We kept a Kannan, a Diamant [de Semilly] and CSF Olympic Star, an Indoctro. She’s out of Olympic Clover, from the last crop of Clover Hill.

“We also imported Tell Of Clover, a Clover Hill mare. She jumped on the junior gold medal team for Switzerland and also jumped internationally for Italy. We bred her to Cruising and we got CSF Telly Cruz. She has a line there thats coming through, so that Diamant filly foal we kept this year is off her.”

The third of the 2018 fillies to be retained is the Kannan filly, CSF Kayla out of CSF Quick Pick. “She was Quick Star, Voltaire, King of Diamonds, going back to Craven A, Double O Seven, all that line. Her oldest is the six-year-old CSF Mia, Greg Broderick has her.

“Quick Pick had a very strong line too of 1.50m jumpers so that’s why we kept the Kannan filly. The mare died foaling but Philip [McManus] saved the foal for us. Dad rang him to say we had an emergency foaling, he must have a turbojet because he was down with us in 10 minutes.”

The Connollys are yet more customers of Galway’s supervet. “All he wants to do is get the animal right or the mare in foal. That’s the priority,” praised Patrick. “He’s like something that’s charged up! The times we’d see Philip most are early morning, either after 12am or after 5am,” added Shane.

Scanning and AI are near round-the-clock vigils for professional breeders. “Everyone in the family gets drafted in, including Mam [Dolly], she does all the bookwork and my brother Brian. When the going gets tough, everyone gets pulled in!”

Amongst last year’s sires are “Zirroco Blue, Vivant, Carrera, Cornet, Diamant, Berlin, Tyson, Grand Slam, Glasgow, a lot of the VDL stallions through Kylemore Stud.” Word-of-mouth recommendation and a stallion’s performers help narrow the decisions down. A younger stallion with his own strong performance record would be considered, however a more established sire has to have performers. “If he’s not producing and ageing, he mightn’t be a good progenitor,” is Shane’s opinion.

WISHFUL THINKING

The family buck the trend toward early foals. “You’re nearly better with May and June foals than an early foal. You’re getting into a yearling at the sales otherwise and they don’t look as nice. You’d sell a July or August foal easier sometimes than a February foal,” said Shane, whose work as a farrier trims back production costs. He feels remedial farriery can make a difference. “The problem sometimes is when you tell a customer what has to be done, how long it can take, they might think you’re looking for money off them!”

On money matters, how do breeders make a profit?

“They’d want to be a valuable foal anyhow, number one, to get money off them. It would want to be something that would make a decent price. If you’ve a foal and go to sales and get €1,000, its a waste of time for the breeder,” states Patrick, who regards selling all their foals from home as “wishful thinking”.

“The west of the Shannon can get a bit dragged down that way,” added Shane, who feels some buyers prefer going to sales than travelling to farms. Although they do sell from the field, the family are noted consignors at sales since Warrenstown Well Aware was the Goresbridge pathfinder.

“Some years back, we used to do three days in a row at Goresbridge foal sales but now it’s normally one or two days. We’re lucky enough between elite sales and selling at home, that by that time [October], most of the foals would normally be sold. We try and get into all; Millstreet, Cavan, Barnadown and this year we did the Mayo Roscommon Breeders and then Goresbridge,” said Shane, listing their sales calendar.

Are foal pinhookers still on the lookout for stores?

“They’re getting harder to get, even since I first started going to the sales with Dad. A lot of people are going out of it. Now, when one person goes, there’s often a new person coming in but not like it was one time. I remember you’d see truckloads of foals going out of Goresbridge every evening to Clare, thats not happening or as big as it used to.”

The sale of a good foal can carry a breeder’s other foals through a year but overall, do breeders get enough financial reward?

“You won’t get it out of all the foals, you will from the good ones,” responded Patrick. “Nearly all the top sires are up on €2,000, it’s a lot of money, like. And even if you go to, say, Goresbridge and get €5,000 for the foal, you have to pay your vet, get them registered, entered. There’s at least another €700 or €800 gone.”

Another hallmark, no doubt due to Dolly’s efficiency, is the fact that their foals are promptly registered, named and branded with the CSF prefix. Looking up the family tree of the silver medallist CSF Sir George on IHR Online for the Lanaken breeding feature was a breath of fresh air to see all her progeny registered, even this year’s half-brother colt foal CSF Casco by Carrera VDL. “He was sold to Sweden this year to Annika Gustafsson, the girl that owned that mare’s first foal, Sera Vue,” remarked Shane.

THE DREAM

Norrira, the Cavalier Royale-Diamond Lad dam of the pair and their Clover Hill troupe are good examples of old Irish lines when Shane replies to what their advice is to breeders starting off.

“Try and start off with the best mare possible that you can afford. Whether buy her as a foal, if it’s cheaper that way, or as a two or three-year-old, whatever you can do, but the best lines possible. The Irish lines are nearly wearing out for jumping but if there’s a good mare with performance, it wouldn’t stop us from buying her if she’s Irish. We wouldn’t be biased, it’s whatever we think will breed a jumper for us. That’s what we would try to buy, a mixed model really.”

Breeding for the show jumping market is their specific aim. “The preference would be show jumping. Probably with the hands they go into, some end up eventing. If you’re going to go down the road of breeding eventers you’re more than likely keeping them on until they’re three, four-year-olds and that doesn’t really suit us.”

“It’s that much harder for us in a way when you’re selling them on as foals. If you were keeping them on and producing them, you might be able to choose more where they go.

“But it wouldn’t work for us as we wouldn’t ride them ourselves and you could end up getting out of horses,” continued Shane.

Both are politely sceptical about bringing mares out for inspections; “Breeding performers, that will be your star rating,” maintained Patrick or whether thoroughbred sire will become popular again.

“I remember when I was young I used to go to Ballinasloe Fair with my father. There’d be heaps of nice foals coming in by the likes of Primal, Final Problem, lovely foals off Draught mares. You wouldn’t get the same calibre of foals now by the thoroughbreds, no way in the world. Not for show jumping, I can’t see it. Even the Breeders Conference we were at in Naas, it was all about thoroughbreds again and I can’t see it,” replied Patrick.

Was the importance of thoroughbred blood more for the eventing market though? “If you’re breeding foals for eventing... forget about it because you’re not going to get a price for them.”

Both would be in favour of an international breeders fund, whereby a percentage of the prize money won at top international level would trickle down to the start of the chain. “It would definitely be a good idea to introduce something like that,” agreed Shane.

Patrick would like to see an increase in prize money for show jumping classes across the board. “You wonder what’s going to happen down the road. Prize money for the young horse classes is good but going round to the ordinary shows and getting a tenner from a class? That’s how people will stop show jumping and it will have an effect on the demand for foals as well. It would be more important to give money to prizemoney, rather than grants. Once some people hear of a grant for €200, they’ll be off buying this, that and the other to get it. That’s a waste of time,” he remarked on the downside of equine breeding grants.

They’ve bred several Lanaken finalists, including Wilywonty and Mr Kroon; then in 2013, Patrick won the leading breeder award at Dublin, thanks to five CSF graduates competing there.

“Dad wasn’t actually there on the Sunday for the presentation! We’d come back because we had a foal selection to get ready for the next day and that’s when we got the phone call. There was a friend of Dad’s there and he collected it for us.”

So what’s the next dream for the family? “Any of the top competitions or to have a horse that would win the Grand Prix in Dublin. Definitely that would be one of the highlights. Or a horse that would compete in the Olympics,” is Shane’s wishlist.

Will Irish show jumping breeding go back to the glory years of Irish-bred medallists?

“It depends,” replied Shane, mentioning the Argentinus mare CSF Alina the family imported and the dam of Dublin qualifier winner and Millstreet Ruby runner-up CSF Foxy Lady. “One year we got Alina’s foal registered with the Oldenburg Verband, because at the time the Irish Horse Board wouldn’t take any foals by a stallion that wasn’t approved and he was a young horse standing abroad. The man who came to mark and microchip the foal was showing us her book and he said all her breeding was old Irish breeding, he could go back 40 years through the lines.

“And he said if anyone wanted to breed show jumpers like they did when they started their studbook, it would be 40 years before you’d see the proof of it. So I don’t know if everyone is going to be that dedicated to the job.”

With their own brand of dedication and determination, the CSF team has already seen that proof since Patrick’s Uncle Walter wedding present in the mid-1980s.