HORSE Sport Ireland is launching two new schemes to assist breeders and advance the breeding industry in this most challenging year: a ‘Breaking and development scheme’ and ‘Mare upgrade scheme’.

Director of Breeding and Production Alison Corbally said: “We have just completed a benchmarking exercise on the active broodmare herd from our HSI database and some of the key findings confirm our concerns, that there are not enough proven performance families currently in the active broodmare population.