THIS time of year Ballinroe International Horse Transport is busy moving mares and foals to and from Ireland to the U.K. and France. At Ballinroe they are careful with their valuable cargo and always make sure that mares and foals get as much room as possible and are bedded down well with shavings.

Director Patrick Keane says of their attention to detail: “If the foals have a good comfortable bed they will lie down and the journey will be as easy as staying in their own stable.” He adds: “Taking the stress out of the journey is so important for every horse. If horses are happy and travelling well they will arrive at their destination in good shape.”

So many factors need consideration when transporting bloodstock, as Patrick points out. “Horses travelling well is down to the drivers, a bad driver will cause a horse to travel badly. Also space is a factor: having enough space per horse is key. Every horse is different, and even if some are not very big, they may prefer more space. Drivers need to change things quickly if a horse isn’t travelling well, there is always a reason.”

With the huge volume of horses travelling out of Ireland every week, Ballinroe runs an efficient fleet. They have the breeze-up sales from April onwards and as most of the breeze-up catalogues are made up of Irish consignors there are always a lot of two-year-olds to be transported to these sales. Then from August to October Ballinroe concentrates on the yearling sales. From November to December the breeding stock and foals sales dominate and as with every journey with Ballinroe, careful, efficient transportation is at the heart of things for Patrick and his team.

Brexit

The impact of Brexit has made transporting horses more difficult however, and that is being felt on the ground by our Irish transporters, as Patrick points out. “The process of shipping horses has been made so expensive by Brexit and a lot of it is unnecessary. We should be able to do a lot more to reduce these costs and make it easier for Irish people to move their horses out of Ireland. We got through last year and I thought that things would get better this year, but we still have two vets inspecting horses leaving for the U.K.”

It is vital that our transport companies who are navigating the issues cast up by Brexit are listened to. Patrick firmly believes that a reduction to one vet inspection would be a huge help. He also highlights the need for the Department of Agriculture paperwork to be able to be validated online, which would save huge amounts of time for everyone involved and allow our transporters to do their vital job more easily.