Breeding
Breeding young talented dressage horses is a major activity at Coolhorses. To keep up good performances in the dressage sport, you need good dressage horses! Coolhorses provides quality horses with a nice appearance, a good character and nice movements. We have our own breeding mares and choose the best fitting stallion to have a top combination. Isabel trains them up for selling or participating in competitions with them.
Which breeding mares?
We breed with mares that are only used for breeding and therefore not ridden. These breeding mares are able to carry and deliver the foal themselves. It is important that they have a nice character and are strong, in good health and pretty.
We also breed with topsport mares that are ridden and participate in competitions. For these mares, it is impossible to carry and deliver the foal themselves therefore we use a recipient mare. In that way, these topsport mares can stay on topsport level and compete, while they deliver embryos to reproduce themselves.
Which stallions?
Coolhorses chooses well-known stallions with a good pedigree and good genes for their breeding mares. We prefer stallions with a nice posture, a lot of strength, healthy, and good character. We select them out of a catalogue of professional deck stations who deliver semen of well-known stallions, who perform under topsport riders. You find younger and older stallions to breed with, it all depends on the prices that can vary from 500 euro up to 2500 euro.
Coolhorses is also really busy to be able to breed with our own bred and bought stallions. To make this all possible, our stallions need to undergo a selection trial, named 'the stallion competition'. For Belgium it is done by studbook BWP, the 'Belgisch Warmbloed Paard'. First, they need to be approved by a vet if they are healthy and sound, afterwards, they get marks on their appearance and talent.
Netallic Coolhorses was bought by Coolhorses at a young age and is undergoing this selection process. There are 3 rounds and in march 2022 he is going to the 3rd round where he needs to be ridden and a guest rider will test him on his character and talent.
No Limit Coolhorses, 8 yo, is one of our own bred stallions who will start in 2022 at the intermediate level and will afterwards be able to qualify as a licensed stallion. With older stallions, the procedure works in a different way. Based on the results and honours list the stallion can be approved.
Which methods?
The true-breeding mares who carry the foal, are being inseminated artificially. We select the stallions thoroughly, which one fits best with the character and talent of the breeding mare. The deck station sends the frozen semen by post. Our specialized vet will use this semen to fertilize the mare and follows her up by scanning until she is pregnant. The breeding mare keeps the embryo and after one month will be scanned again. Afterwards, she will carry the foal until it is born.
With topsport mares, who cannot carry the foal themselves, we use embryo transplantation. The basic process like the selection of the stallion and artificial insemination stays the same. Only, when the mare is scanned for the first time and there is fertilization, this embryo will be transplanted into a surrogate mare. Afterwards, this mare will be followed up and scanned until she is pregnant with the embryo. Those recipient or surrogate mares will carry and deliver the foal eventually. It doesn't need to be dressage mares, a lot of mares out of different sports can be used as surrogate mares.
Examples of Coolhorses breeding stock:
Through the years there were a lot of foals born at Coolhorses. Some of them are still here and performing in competition under Isabel Cool, others are sold...
Below you can find some pictures of horses bred by Coolhorses: