MY husband Stephen and myself are from the Craigantlet hills overlooking Belfast Lough, outside Newtownards, Co Down. Stephen owns a plant hire company, U-Hire, and farms Hereford cows and sheep part-time.

Myself and Lesley Jones look after the 14 horses on the farm. Horses have always constituted a very big part of our lives, having grown up pony clubbing and hunting.

1. Congratulations, you qualified at Armagh County for The Irish FieldBreeders’ Championship at Dublin with Kief Queen B and her filly foal. Tell us more about the pair.

Kief Queen B is 10 years old, by the thoroughbred horse Munther and out of the Kings Master mare, Madame Noir. Bred by Kieran Fahey in Co Cork, we bought her as a three-year-old from Anthony Gordon after seeing her at the All Ireland three-year-old final at Bannow and Rathangan.

Stephen loved her the minute he saw her walk into the ring but it took us six months to convince Anthony to sell her!

Kief Queen B has had a prolific career under saddle winning the four-year-old hunter and reserve championship at Balmoral. She went on to win reserve champion mare at the RDS in 2018 and in the same year she won the RDS broodmare championship and the coveted Coote Cup.

She has had four foals to date – all of which we still own. Woodview Firestarter (Henry) is jumping and showing and won the four-year-old working hunter championship at the Northern Ireland Festival in April.

Our yearling and two-year-old are both by Centre Stage. Claudie The Dandy was second in last year’s All Ireland final at Bridgetown and Doubleact (Lizzie) won her class at the Royal Ulster Agricultural Show at Balmoral this year. We are looking forward to bringing them all to the RDS this year.

Queen B’s latest foal, Temperance, is a beautiful chesnut filly by the thoroughbred stallion Rosier (High Chaparral x Dowsing). She is very dainty, has a great step, a real character and is 91% Irish Thoroughbred.

2. What’s your aim as a breeder?

To breed quality performance horses that will go on to event or show at a high level. We are quite old-fashioned in our training; with young horses, we go hunting in the winter and showing/working hunter in the summer. These are great disciplines to teach our young horses to behave and ride well in all conditions.

3. Favourite bloodlines?

We like Irish Thoroughbreds to keep the quality/blood percentage for eventing.

4. What’s your view on prefixes?

We always keep the breeder’s prefix to give credit to the breeder. Queen B sports Kieran Fahy’s KIEF prefix.

For the horses we breed ourselves, we don’t use a prefix but just choose a name that means something to us. Temperance is a name I have loved – she is graceful, has a great step and is bred to jump.

5. How many mares do you currently have?

We have two mares, Kief Queen B and a thoroughbred mare, Double Smart (Smartie), who was a very successful point-to-point mare. She was produced by Patrick Turley and ridden by Declan Lavery and was an amazing mare over fences. Smartie has a yearling by Kew Gardens and a two-year-old by Order of St George.

6. Describe your regime for keeping mares/youngstock?

The mares/foals are stabled at night and out during the day. They like the routine. Stephen has built a beautiful set of stables at Woodview and they are knee-deep in straw. We feed Connolly’s Red Mills which we love and make our own haylage.

7. If you could have bred any horse?

Honeysuckle! Enough said!

8. It takes a team - who is on yours?

We’ve all been together over 20 years and are very grateful for our team, both on the ground and in the ring. Lesley is the mainstay and together with Barry, her husband, does most of the work with the youngstock. Lesley does all the breaking and riding. We work together every day hacking out, working in the ring and jumping.

Barry looks after all the ringwork with the youngstock, ably assisted by his father Barney. Mark and Stephen Webb, Lesley’s brother and father, and Andrea McKee constitute the excellent team on the ground and we all have great fun together!

9. Best advice you ever got?

Buy what you like and follow your gut instinct. This was advice from William Fox Pitt!

10. Best moment with Kief Queen B?

When she won the All Ireland mare and foal championship at Iverk Show in 2022! It was a jubilant day!