Brazil (by Jean Llewellyn) Beatriz ‘Bia’ Nicotero is one of today’s young generation of sport horse breeders – a minority in today’s male-dominated breeding world – who took over the family stud farm, Haras Feroleto, from her father, Benedito Nicotero. In the two decades since the stud farm was established, in the rolling countryside outside Sao Paolo, Brazil, Benedito Nicotero has been attributed with breeding two approved stallions, Landritter II do Feroleto and Landmax do Feroleto.
Bia Nicotero took over eight years ago when her father stepped down although, as she candidly admits that he remains her counsel: “Always giving me good advice and helping me a lot. But horses are a day to day job and you’ve got to love it.”
Q - Tell me about the farm.
A - Our stud farm started about 20 years ago. Mainly we were guided by the Holsteiner concept. We bought a son of Landgraf in a Calypso mare, who is called Landritter (Landgraf I – Radona x Calypso I), and he made a difference not only in our farm but also our country’s breeding industry. Some say that we had two faces: before and after Landritter. We saw an advance in our fillies and foals. Around seven or eight years ago when the marketplace was globally more open, we were able to have important mares, not only papers but conformation, height – which is something very new to Brazil, to look at the mares and not only the stallions.
Today, I believe we have around 12 mares which are top quality, of different breeds and different papers and, therefore, we are breeding with a lot of quality. We had a South American Games and we had three of our products in th 14 horses that went, and eight were sons of Landritter, so you can see the advance that Landritter produced in Brazil.
We are very vigorous in our breeding. Our challenge is to produce premium horses for very competitive riders. We look to produce horses for the top championships and Grand Prix level. I know this is a challenge because a lot happens on the way to achieving this, but it’s our main focus, and I think we’re doing a good job.
We have been exporting some horses, we have some very important Brazilian riders riding our horses, so we have seen a lot of development. At this point we are very happy with our strategy and will be able to execute it as planned….
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