Ulli Klatte came to Australia some 15 years ago, fell in love with the country and Australian brunette Belinda Tattam. Together they are a formidable team and developed Belcam into high profile professional warmblood stud on the Gold Coast Hinterland of Queensland - Australia.
Ulrich Klatte is the son of the famous Klatte family of Zuchthof Klatte in Germany, home of the champion German stallions Grannus and Argentinus, both famous Hanovarian sires in the Oldenburg area..
QWhy Australia?
"Definitely the weather ... but, apart from that, it is just a great country to breed and raise horses. It is healthier with the large paddocks and the hills. We don’t have much of a soundness problem. Our mares don’t foal in stables where it is much easier to catch infections. We have a lot of advantages here."
Q Having close family connections must be a major advantage?
BK: Actually being family makes it harder. We don’t get the stallions on loan, we have to buy them, just like anybody else. We are just lucky to be able to access the knowledge.
UK: We had Aachen (Argentinus) already here, when the first Argentinus offspring started to do well. Aachen was light on his feet, the sort of horse the Australian rider likes. The rideability is somewhat different to Europe. The German rider wants to put the pressure on and create the movement, while the Australian rider sits on top of the horse and has control. Basically you look at two different types of horses.
Q Crossing your stallions with the Australian thoroughbred must give you that different type of horse?
UK: The Australian and also the New Zealand thoroughbreds are better than the ones in Europe. They have a bit more substance. Through the thoroughbreds you get more engagement behind. This suppleness and elasticity is hard to find in Germany. We are producing some 30 to 40 foals each year. We are not claiming they are all super stars. Some are average, a fair few are more than appealing and a few are superstars. We aim to produce the international dressage or show-jumping horse. That does not always happen.
BK: All the stallions we’ve had are sold after three to five years. You have to progress and bring in new lines. We have not stagnated with the same sire lines. You always want to create better. That's why we keep upgrading our stallion lines. The heavier Holsteiners, the old fashioned type mares, produce so well with our modern stallions. We have built also a good pool of Grannus mares, because the Grannus lines mix well with most bloodlines. That is important to us. We are phasing out the thoroughbred a fair bit now. The gene pool of the thoroughbred is so unknown, you never know what comes out. It is too unpredictable. We know the good and weak points of the thoroughbred, and even over the first and second cross mares it will still fall back to those. In Germany they want more blood, more lightness, we want more power, a bit more strength and we are finding that in the second cross warmbloods. We haven’t got the problem with heaviness yet. With the straight cross thoroughbred you certainly produce an elegant horse. It is the next generation that is the best riding horse. They are the most marketable ones. It all takes a lot of time. Luckily we have the numbers, that makes it easier.
UK: The Oldenburger is a very old and established breed, they still have the old gene pool behind them. They are an honest horse with very good temperament. The Oldenburger Verband collected the good lines from Holstein, Hannover, France and The Netherlands in their modernisation. They are more open than the Holsteiners or Hanoverians, who stick to their lines. I think that the future importance of targeting and pushing the individual breeds such as the Hanoverian, Holsteiners, Oldenburgers etc. will decrease. Just look at the pedigrees to see how an individual horse can have a variety of breeds in its gens. After all, let's not forget that the breed name is due to the area in which these horses are bred!