britiah bred v imported horses

no it doesn't if you've seen the videos of the sites in Germany and Holland

Lusos are also overproduced as your seller's comment verifies

and if you read the controversy over Gordon Ramsay and his feature on horsemeat you will graphically understand the different attitude to horses between us in the UK and those over the Channel

if you were 'irritate' by my sig

********** GOOOOOOOOOOODDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD **************

it's MEANT to 'irritate' 'cos if it makes even *1* person stop and think and buy british instead of importing then it has helped a hard pressed british breeder to survive for another day

if you don't breed horses then you will NOT understand where I am coming from
 
well done

I totally agree the UK riders often don't do enough flat work - the problem with the over the channel lot is they do too much of it too young

if it is unacceptable to race TBs at 2 then it is unacceptable to do collected sitting trot work on a horse at 2 as well - and THAT is what the continental factory farmed horse product does

..........and following on from the Gordon Ramsay thread ........ if the young horse over the Channel 'breaks' whilst it is being over produced too young then they will eat it and just get on with the next one

so if you don't like factory farmed chicken - don't buy a factory farmed horse
 
good points and fundamentally I don't disagree with you

it's just that we see soooooo many people blindly crossing the channel and buying factory farmed horses that are bred in such quantities that if they go wrong the foreigners just eat them (gordon ramsay controversy here)

I've seen SO many of these over-produced-too-young horses go lame too young and the distress caused to their devoted UK owners that really what I'm about is trying to get people to see that they CAN find quality horses in the UK (agree 10 years ago perhaps they couldn't but they CAN now !!!) and that these horses are given a life and not overworked when young

trying to breed a better and SOUNDER horse with an equitable temprament is a good aim - and I don't (unlike a lot of people) dislike Arabs as their soundness (viz a viz endurance for example) is amazing and they are - as you rightly say - the foundation of the TB breeding.

what i object to is this (often UK 'trainer' led) mass exodus to buy abroad without even considering a UK bred horse

UK breeders have a d**n hard time and ARE trying to improve - despite the astronomical costs and lack of subsidies in this country.

When the UK horse buyer won't even support us there is something very wrong - the Germans ride German horses, the French ride French - why cannot the UK rider rider British ?!?!?!?!?!?!!?
 
To be honest, there are certain breeds that the UK just does not "do" well. Sorry but they just don't, but they still ask silly money for them because they are whatever breed which may be a bit different from the norm. For example, if I were still in the UK, yes I would want Quarter Horses still, however I honestly couldn't bring myself to buy a British one sorry. They just don't have the lines that I want and they really are not breeding the sort of quarter horse that I would choose to buy....the vast majority have far lower class of bloodlines in my opinion. So I would for certain import any QH or Paint from the States.

WB's, well this is a funny one. In the past yes I have brought ones in from the Continent and yes the price was half or less of what was available in the UK, however back then I did not know what was going on to be honest. I was totally unaware of the, what appears to be the case, PMU issues. Having said that back then I don't think that PMU had hit your shores so it marginally justifies things in my mind. Nowadays? Well finding out what I have found out, no I wouldn't import a WB unless it had superb breeding - I'm talking about a top dam here, not some old nag who happens to have a well known grandsire. This is what is happening - the horses that are being bred to are substandard BUT they have a name somewhere in their distant past that people recognise so sadly people think they are getting some super-star when in fact they are buying the by-product of a particularly seedy business. This sort of business really does make me cringe now - these people are making huge money out of this awful practice and it saddens me that not one organisation has taken this and highlighted it to the public.

There are still some good breeders and producers on the Continent though and it is them that I feel sorry for - how can they possibly compete? Just as how can British breeders compete? So, airedale, don't be too harsh on all imported horses because some of them do still come from ethical backgrounds.
 
I don't know much on this topic TBH. I have 1 non-British bred horse and am certainly not bothered that he isn't so. I think it totally depends on what breed you want as some countries do them better than the UK. For example, in the future I plan to buy a pure bred Lusitano. Now, obviously there are a few studs here in the UK nowadays but they are still very much the breed of Portugal so I would have no qualms about getting one from there. I would look at any in this country too though. This is obviously a more specialist breed though.

I would be happy to buy in the UK, if they had what I wanted at the time. But if I have the money, then I wouldn't mind looking abroad either.
 
How funny, just because they treat it as a business it is labelled factory farm produced horse. There is as much wasted in the racing industry I dont see much uproar about that. I have not seen many 2yr olds having to put up with days of sitting trot either. Sorry but they can produce horses, we on the otherhand are not so good at it. We do not worry about training our riders as they do. There are more good "foreign" bred horses still competiting into old age as there are the broken ones. If you breed as many as they do then the % will be higher stands to reason. And yes some of them are over produced, but no more then racing TB's. They care about the blood lines, they consider their breeding programmes and breed some bl==dy good horses. The UK could but does not get the backing. And to repeat we do not have the skills to produce our horses at the level they do abroad. As for the QH, there happens to be some very good studs in the UK, where you can get some excellent examples of the breed.
 
Not in my experience. I haven't ever seen a QH stud coming even close to what I have out here, available in the UK. Perhaps some have been imported in the last couple of years; but even so there is no way I would buy a British raised QH youngster.

TB racehorses are not a by-product of any other business - lots of WB's are. I'm presuming you didn't read or understand my post.
 
right - I discussed this specific issue with my vet very recently

he stated - this is a qualified vet and NOT me - that

when they X-ray 2 yr old TBs in general their joint plates are such that they are fully developed

when they x-ray WBs (which is what the factory farms generally breed) there is NO WAY that a WBs joints would be mature at 2 yrs old

therefore - whilst I do agree that there are issues surrounding racing - there is FAR FAR more damage done to WB joints by overworking at two (when WBs generally mature at 5 or 6 ) then there is done to TBs at 2 when they are mature at 4.
 
My WB 's stifle was x-rayed at 2 years 8 months due a bone chip (all removed now fine!), he clearly had a huge gap between the bones, vet commented on it saying perfectly normal and what you would expect to see at that age.
 
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We have some great horses over here but we also have a lot of rubbish that people insist on using for breeding. I think quality stallion owners need to be picky over the mares they cover rather than thinking of lining there pockets. Abroad they generally breed from only good quality horses. Of course there will always be a horse that is well bred that comes to nothing though

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I couldn't agree more! Also there are far too many inferior stallions offered at stud! A lot of stallions are advertised for having amazingly good temperaments as the most important advertising feature. Well whilst yes that is essential, it is not the be all an end all! A stud I worked on years ago, valued the temperament of their stallions over ANYTHING else - where is this stud now? Closed down!

It's not just about temperament though, if a colt is an unusual colour, then almost regardless of his conformation, he will be given a chance at stud - I am generallising HUGELY here!!

This is one reason why I had my yearling gelded, dispite a lot of people on here and RL saying it was a shame. I'm no fool, I can see his conformation faults and for me, that is not acceptable in a breeding stallion and if he's not allowed to breed, then why keep him entire?
 
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