WE farm 250 acres near Aughrim in Co Wicklow. The farm has been family operated down through the years.

Myself and wife Teresa have six in our family; five daughters – Joanne, Carmel, Sinead, Triona and Clare – and son Ciaran, who is now playing the biggest part on the farm and with the horse-breeding end. The girls have all settled in Ireland and they too all played a part on the farm.

I’ve been in all kinds of farming over the years, starting off with 40 acres. We kept 200 sows, milked 80 cows and lambed 1,200 ewes at different stages. That’s where the girls were in their element at lambing time, especially bottle-feeding lambs.

We started in horses in 1998 when we bought Suma’s Saga from Suma Stud and we’ve bred up to 40 mares per year.

Diversification, coupled with a good wife and family, was the key to success.

1. Proudest moment(s) as a breeder?

Our proudest moment in horses was in the Celtic Tiger years when it was fashionable for most people to buy a horse. We did very well during those years and put the money towards more land development and equipment.

I believe if you get good money from horses, don’t put it all back into horses.

Ciaran believes that seeing foals being born and watching them develop is his proudest moment, more so than results. Results are great but results are very individual! When the mares are breeding well and you’ve a healthy foal on the ground, that’s his main thing to be proud of.

2. Favourite broodmare(s), past or present?

It’s hard to pick out one as such but definitely Leamore Master Plan’s dam, Ardragh Bash would be one. She was a lovely mare. Another of our earlier ones and was by Cavalier Royale out of a Golden Bash dam. We bought her from Tom Rowland, she was in foal to Guidam at the time and then we bred her a couple of times to Master Imp.

We still have her Guidam daughter, Guidam’s Royal and we’ve a Golden Master filly foal out of her this year.

And then there was the very first mare Suma’s Saga (Pride of Shaunlara – Carlisheen Molly, by Solo Head) that started it all.

3. Tell us about breeding Leamore Master Plan (Master Imp xx – Ardragh Bash), the best-placed Irish-bred at Luhmühlen last weekend with Ariel Grald (USA). He was the highest-ranked of Master Imp’s progeny in the 2019 USEF sire rankings and is now the fourth-highest ranked Irish Sport Horse in the Hippomundo rankings.

We sold him as a three-year-old loose jumping and later on he was sold to America. Ardragh Bash had a nice bit of bone and that’s why we went to Master Imp, with him being a thoroughbred, to put a bit of blood into her as she was quite a heavy mare.

He was also one of the best eventing sires over the years and I suppose Leamore Master Plan is now from the last of the Master Imp crops in eventing.

Guidam’s Royal is the only one of the family that we still have.

4. Your family has also bred other good event horses such as The Court Jester (Harlequin du Carel – Frankfort Diamond, by Frankfort Boy) and the US-based Ballingowan Ginger (Master Imp – Ballydavid Vera, by Ginger Dick). Was the plan to breed event horses?

We have eventing type mares that are back-bred to foreign or Irish thoroughbreds and that’s when it really worked well for us by using thoroughbred stallions. The Irish thoroughbred cross really suited the heavier foreign-type mare.

That’s what it’s about, finding the best match and then the horse getting the best chance by going to the right owners.

5. Do you sell or retain youngstock, or a combination?

We sell them off mostly as foals now, although we might keep the odd filly as a broodmare replacement, especially off the Guidam mare. We’d sell away to the contacts we have and at the Goresbridge sales.

Word of mouth works very well too, we’re never really looking for advertising or publicity, we just like to work away!

But you do find the best way to building up contacts and repeat customers is through word of mouth.

6. Tell us about your current broodmares and foals this year.

We’ve about 25 mares at the moment, including thoroughbreds and the sport horse mares are by quite a few different sires: Puissance, Coevers Diamond Boy, Kings Master, Aldatus Z, OBOS Quality and some younger ones by Pointilliste, to name just a few.

This year we’ll have 17 foals, hopefully. We’ve used plenty of different sires down through the years and we use Pointilliste a lot, Golden Master and then we’re expecting some foals by Marion Hughes’ young horse HHS Cornet. We’ve used Cavalier Land a lot and they’ve worked out very well.

We are leaning more towards thoroughbreds as we’ve had a nice bit of luck with them.

7. Favourite stallion bloodlines?

It has to be a bit of both – foreign and Irish.

If you’ve a nice half-bred mare, you can go both or thoroughbred or if your mare is too blood, you can go to a foreign horse.

The best we’ve had are Master Imp or Puissance so I’d say then it’s Imperius bloodlines as they were both by him. Cavalier Land is out of an Imperius mare too.

8. It takes a team – who’s on yours? The team is the family. We’re pretty self-sufficient, especially as we now sell horses on as foals and there’s very little breaking or producing needed then that way.

9. What advice would you give to other breeders?

Our experience, for what it’s worth, is safety from injuries is paramount. “If it can happen to a horse, it will’, so good fencing and well-maintained land helps.

Another piece of advice is breed from popular bloodlines and straight mares. Avoid stabling and isolation as much as possible. Horses like company and don’t develop bad habits if they’re allowed to move freely.

Mares seldom give any trouble foaling if allowed plenty of exercise. We use the stitch-in foaling alert system and it works 100% with a call to your phones when the mare starts to foal.

Quality over quantity is the best advice, no matter what you’re breeding. And then to sell at the foal stage.

10. What do you see as the greatest challenges facing Irish breeders?

We think there’s two. Are Irish thoroughbred stallions getting enough chances to prove themselves?

Where’s the next Master Imp? There’s been a gap since him of a proven thoroughbred stallion.

Although there’s some good stallions coming up – and we’d rate Pointilliste as one – there’s others out there that are only getting a handful of mares. And without the numbers, they’re not getting that chance.

The other is X-rays. Enough said!