The Allevamento Frisoni PGP comes mainly from the passion and love for horses that unites two generations, and that certainly will be passed on to the third. After several work and holiday trips in Holland, we literally fell in love with the Friesian horse and its ancient history. Our excursions took the form of real cultural missions, exploring all the nuances of the breed from its origins until today: in this regard we have to thank some of the most famous Dutch farmers who have transferred a wealth of knowledge and invaluable experience. Inevitably we started the first purchases, the first sales, the first foals were born, and now we own a breeding farm that counts about thirty horses of which some are still living in the beautiful Friesian area.
There is no real date of birth for our farm. All we can say is that we are talking about ten years since we initially started as a hobby, without actually thinking about a real business. As the Friesian horse was not very popular on the Italian territory and there wasn’t a stud book for this breed, we can say we were the first farm in Italy and our direct contacts were with the KFPS (Dutch Friesian breed association). Finally in 2007, four passionate individuals (that we would like to thank) managed to create the first officially recognized Friesian breed association. Today it is the Friesian Horse Association of Italy, starting up the official annual horse events with Dutch judges and offering a range of basic services for the diffusion of the breed.
Despite being a very ancient breed, the Friesian horse was almost extinct at the end of year 800. Only 3 stallions were protected and saved and they are the ones who gave origin to today's bloodlines. So today, while expanding as a breed, we are still in a stage of full development as far as quality is concerned. There is still room for morphological and functional improvement, in fact we are accustomed to seeing these horses in circuses or movies but rarely engaged in sports especially at high levels. Therefore, quality is the only way that can change the future of the Friesian. This is our main goal that we are pursuing with an eye toward endogamyin order to give a new setting to this breed in terms of attitude and development. It is therefore not by chance that we blindly believe in partnership and teamwork that combines high quality and specialized veterinarians, farriers and horsemen so we can achieve important results in different directions contributing to the growth of this wonderful breed.
To date we have succeeded, thanks to the cooperation of many, to collect large successes in Italy and Holland. Also thanks to Claudia Montanari we stepped on the 5th block of the podium at the 2012 International dressage competition for young horses held in Pompadour, France with our Friesian horses competing against dozens of breeds far more common and normally used in this discipline. Since 2007, when the shows officially started in Italy, we have been awarded annually for the best colts in Italy. In 2011 we also added the title of “Best Stallion in Italy” in our curriculum and in the same year the title of best young mare in Category1. We also received the "1 Premie " for two of our horses. Normally only 6% of the total population reaches this goal. We are extremely happy with the results achieved and we intend to continue to divulge the Friesians in Italy and abroad. It is not a mystery that all of our mares have been recognized "Ster" and that all our foals have been awarded as well. Yet we do not feel at the finish line, but we look forward to future successes with motivation and the intention to always improve.
When we started our breeding farm we needed to evaluate and choose our partners, perhaps the most difficult task of all. Again we were looking for quality partners and when we talk about SBS (Italy in our case) we talk about quality at 360°. We have found SBS personnel of great value, efficient, effective and always available with impeccable ethics and professionalism. Their assistance to our farm ranges from the preparation of the broodmares to the insemination until the birth of the foals and subsequent checks. They manage a highly equipped facility and
operate with advanced technologies that guaranteed excellent results. This strong partnership has allowed us to grow and improve also thanks to the organization of specific seminars on behalf of the Friesian Horse Association of Italy.
At the moment we do not own stallions for breeding so we cannot fully enjoy the enormous benefits that SBSItalia offers but, as said, the Friesian breed has a rather limited number of stallions (in activity there are only about 80 stallions ), some of which are outside Europe. It is therefore evident that through the SBS program that offers services related to frozen semen (import, etc) we can expand the choice of the stallions. We chose a different stallion for each broodmare so we can expand the bloodlines. This is essential to obtain the desired quality of the new born, as well as to enable us to continue the search for new crossings and lowering the coefficient of consanguinity of our subjects.
Photo credit: Allevamento Frisoni PGP.
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