Our breeding
"Horse breeding arose out of love and fascination with horses. Even as a small child, I was fascinated by horses. As a self-employed farmer, I soon had the idea of keeping a broodmare. Inspired by active military sport (although with modest means at the time) I was fascinated by high-performing and spirited horses. Horse breeding started with the purchase of fillies from Swiss breeders, but it was important that the foals were able to show a performance-oriented pedigree. So, we slowly built up the breeding and gradually the milk cows had to go to make way for horses."
Josef Hellmüller
Our breeding philosophy
Von HOF's breeding goal is to create an easy-riding, hard-working and high-blooded sport horse with the required quality characteristics. To us, cantering ability, "light-footedness", agility and courage are just as important as jumping ability.
The sports performance certificate in the mare line is also very important to us. So, we started by building our breeding on a foundation of CH mares of the upmost internationally successful bloodlines (such as Cor de la Bryère, mainly via Calando ll; Landgrave - Ladykiller xx; Ramzes x via Ramiro, Roman, Capitol; Irco Polo OR from descendants of Gotthard and Almé, etc.), and eventually evolved to also using extremely successful sports mares for breeding.
As our breeding grew more and more, it became clear that we needed the prerequisites to train the horses ourselves, in order to use them in sport and be able to promote them. Nowadays, all mares are used in sport before or after breeding and the offspring are trained in-house, being most of them ridden in sport tests. This working policy enables us to compare our own horses objectively (rideability, jumping quality, attitude, etc.) and to get important decision-making information to guide our breeding work.
Weaning of the foals & Management of the young horses
In general, our broodmares are kept together in a large pen as we believe in a species-appropriate attitude, providing social contact and a lot of exercise, both necessary aspects for successful horse breeding.
The mares are moved to large boxes when the foaling date is approaching, as we prefer that the birth happens in a controled and monitored environment, so that the entire process can be as safe as possible. After birth, the mare and foal are given some days to adjust and they come back into the group. This way, the foal is immediately integrated and grows up in a social and hierarchical system that is appropriate to the species, which we believe to be very important for later handling the horses.
This group approach also facilitates weaning, as the foals already know each other and quickly get along with each other independently. The weaned foals are kept in the group in a separate loose pen, where soon fillies and colts are separated.
