Henryhorn's Life

Hello, and welcome to Henryhorn's Life.
I have created this blog primarily to enable me to post photographs of our horses, we breed competition horses here in beautiful Devon UK.
It's taken twenty years of breeding to finally produce the type of horses we aimed for, along the way we flirted with various breeds from TB's to warmbloods, discovering the different strengths and weaknesses we wished to keep or discard before finally settling on our present bloodlines.
Our foundation mares were a big Irish TB and an incredibly talented but sharp Non TB X Welsh mare. We tried using pure Irish Draught stallions, TB's, Dutch and some 16 years ago bought our own TB x ID stallion, who we competed in most disciplines with success. His bloodline features Arctic Que and Knock Boy, who in turn produced Seacrest (Grade A sire of Cruising, who reached number two in the World Show Jumping Rankings before being retired to stud.)
Ambertson (our stallion) has covered many different types of mares, from lightweight 14.2h.h to chunky 16.2h.h, and one thing has become clear, the temperament and jumping ability passes to every single one of the offspring. It does of course help if the mare is talented, but even the most mediocre vanner mare has produced talented willing jumpers. Many horses are talented, but there is a world of difference in a horse that is not spooky or scared of a jump than one you have to "teach" to jump...
We did find however that the youngstock sometimes lacked quality, so once his daughters were old enough, we put them to pure TB's or a local stallion Harper's Bornival, who is Belgian x TB.
His breeding on the Belgian side is related to Didi, the highest ever money winning UK stallion (SJ), and the dam of this stallion was placed several times at Badminton, so he had proven competition lines as well as BSJA winnings himself. We were lucky enough to aquire him on loan, making breeding so much easier.
The result was Narramore Diamond, (see photo) who at 16 hh is stunningly beautiful as well as talented. She retains the paces of the warmblood, the jump from our own bloodline, and to date has competed successfully in dressage/ODE and Hunter Trials, her showjumping isn't bad either!
In 2002 we purchased full sisters by Michael's Revenge, a TB stallion whose stock was having good results in ODE's and SJ, their dam's breeding was Canworthy Monsun, a Grade A showjumper and Advanced dressage horse, so proven competition bloodlines. The first foal was born in 2004, and is by Ambertson, due in 2005 is a one by Harper's Bornival, it should be interesting to see how they turn out!
Our other broodmares are one by Ambertson ex a mare with British Eventing Points (a field injury curtailed her career) and an ID x TB mare by Pride of Townrath, her foals by Ambertson are all doing well, the oldest having recently qualified for Hickstead, and gaining BSJA placings regularly. Our foundation mares are long gone, and we retained two full sisters by Ambertson ex the best dam, they are both in foal to Harper's Bornival, and produced fillies last year of the same bloodlines.
Over the next few pages I hope to post dozens of photos of horses we own or have bred.
Some will show you what we didn't want to breed, and others our current programme, I hope you enjoy them.
And Bert? (Ambertson) He dreams his life away in the field, being retired and only ridden for a week each year in preparation for leading our local Carnival. His stock are spread throughout the country, rarely changing owners, and I always laugh when I receive a letter or phone call telling me their successes and that they (the owners) have the Best Horse in the World...) Not a bad epitaph when he goes is it.......