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Last year alone, there were nine showjumping horses, six in dressage, 18 in eventing and four in driving representing the Bad-Wü studbook in Warendorf. French Kiss (Florestan x Donnerhall), the Federal Champion of four-year-old stallions comes from Bad-Wü, as well as the bronze medal winner of this age-group class, Sir Oldenburg (Sion x Contender). FBW Kennedy (Tiro - Katy x Karat) under the saddle of Danish dressage rider Lone Jörgensen always places in the top ten at World and European Championships, as well as at the Olympic Games at Sydney, wears a Baden Württemberg breeding label. The quality of these horses is perhaps not well-known world wide as buyers tend to go to the larger breeding lands rather than Baden-Wurttemberg. In order to discover more information about this lesser-known studbook, and how they achieved such high quality, Breeding News talked with their breeding manager, also an agricultural engineer, Gerd Gussmann.
Q How did you become involved in sport horse breeding?
I was a rider and came through equestrian sport into breeding.
Q Your association introduced clear measures for improving breeding quality. One of them was a free choice of stallions and mares from all over Europe, which is not the case in other German breeding areas. What did you achieve with this ‘open’ policy?
It’s true that, with this measure, Bad-Wü was a forerunner in Germany. While the sire’s and mare’s quality improved, those breeders who couldn’t keep up with this quality stopped breeding. Today, the stallion line is so good in Bad-Wü, that the best possible results can be achieved and breeders are no longer allowed to import semen from other breeding lands. The whole situation has been turned around and we now import only 2 percent of semen, but export 40 percent (to the other German breeding areas as well as to Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, and Austria).