Kilkenny native Eamon Sheehan wears many hats, juggling milking his herd of 198 cows and breeding and producing top-quality sport horses from his farm in Cuffesgrange.

Growing up, Eamon was always heavily involved in horses and he says he has his father Eamon Snr to thank for that. His two older brothers, Ronan and Brian, were involved in horses as well as his younger sister Orlaith who also jumped ponies.

After finishing school, Eamon went to Kildalton College to study agriculture where he got his Green Cert. “It fitted the bill for what I needed to do, my work ethic was never great when it came to studying,” Eamon explained.

After his time in Kildalton, like many young people in the sport horse industry, Eamon headed for the US to do a stint on the show jumping circuit in West Palm Beach, Florida, to learn the ropes and way of life over there. Eamon stayed in the US for nearly two years where he worked for Robin Sweely as a work rider, jumping her young horses.

“It doesn’t matter where you go, it’s just good to go and work away from home. I made very good friends and contacts over there. American riders have a good forward style and they are good producers of horses too. Their attention to detail is to a very high standard.

“When I went out there first, Francie Kerins was on the same flight as me, he took me under his wing and really looked after me over there. I couldn’t believe it when I arrived at the show at first, it was a real eye-opener,” Eamon said.

Balancing act

“When I came home from America in 2002, I was suckler farming at the time and we were also foaling down between 10 and 12 broodmares a year. I was producing all of the three and four-year-olds for the sales and we were also doing a lot of buying and selling. In 2008 or 2009 with beef prices becoming increasingly marginal, I was looking for a better option so I went dairy farming,” Eamon said.

Eamon applied for and received the New Entrant milk quota and began milking 64 cows in 2013.

“So as I increased my dairy numbers, I decreased my broodmare herd.

Eamon Sheehan won the Irish Pony Breeders award for Cuffesgrange Cavalidam (ISH) at the HSI Irish Breeding Awards 2018 \ Laurence Dunne/Jumpinaction.net

“It’s an awful lot easier to milk a herd of cows – you’d have a herd of cows milked in the time it’d take to have one horse worked. So that’s why I decided to pull back on the buying and selling and focus more on the breeding,” Eamon explained.

Eamon’s brother Ronan and father Eamon Snr were the ones to thank for starting up the horse business at Cuffesgrange Sport Horses. They put in the foundations together with the breeding and kept the show on the road.

They had two families that were very lucky for them so Eamon decided to focus on them.

Cuffesgrange Millennium was one such mare that was kept on, “She was a mare that my father and brother Ronan bought off Tom Brennan,” Eamon said.

Cuffesgrange Millennium has a lot of successful offspring and one that really jumps out is Cuffesgrange Cavilidam (by Luidam). “She was bred to be a horse but stayed small after being covered with a Section B as a two-year-old and foaling down as a three-year-old,” Eamon said.

She went on to have two foals before being broken and produced and was then sold to Clare Hughes who took her through the ranks.

Cavalidam’s first foal, Cuffesgrange Qualidam is jumping 1.40m in Belgium and her second foal, Cuffesgrange Cavadora (by Z Wellie 72) took home the gold medal at the 2019 FEI WBFSH seven-year-old championships in Lanaken last year with Kilkenny’s Seamus Hughes-Kennedy.

The year before, Cavadora finished fourth in the six-year-old final with Ger O’Neill in the saddle.

Not only has this little mare produced some great progeny, Cuffesgrange Cavalidam has also had great success in the show jumping ring with Seamus Hughes-Kennedy and more recently, Max Wachman.

Last year, Tipperary’s Max Wachman and Cavalidam won team and individual gold medals at the Pony Europeans at Strzegom in Poland.

With the success that the Hughes-Kennedys have had with a few horses from us, we’ve amalgamated a relationship where I’m producing the young horses to three years of age

Cuffesgrange Little Ric is another pony flying the Cuffesgrange flag internationally, having been on the medal-winning British pony eventing team for three years in a row with British rider Saffron Cresswell.

Cuffesgrange Little Ric’s breeding is slightly unusual compared to most eventing ponies. He is out of their Ricardo Z – Clover Hill mare Cuffesgrange Kuriosa by their resident 10hh teaser stallion.

“With the success that the Hughes-Kennedys have had with a few horses from us, we’ve amalgamated a relationship where I’m producing the young horses to three years of age and then Clare takes them on from there producing them through the ranks so we’re doing that in partnership.

“It’s been very lucky for both of us, Clare is very straight, she’s a great business woman and a very good horse woman. She’s obviously very good at producing them and she puts a lot of work in herself. It’s all hands on deck when it comes down to it and she’s not afraid to get her hands dirty,” Eamon said.

Eamon also mentions the importance of a good rider to take horses through the levels which he has in Seamus Hughes-Kennedy.

Challenges

When asked what he finds are the biggest challenges with breeding horses Eamon said: “It’s easy to breed them but the most important thing and the main thing that shone through for us in the last few years is that you can have the best horse in the world but you need the top owners and the top riders to back you.

“For me, the biggest challenge is making sure they end up in the right hands and when that does come to fruition everything else comes together.”

When choosing stallions, Eamon sticks with the older, proven sires: “I generally wouldn’t go down the young-stallion route, it’s easier to follow family lines with the older ones,

“I try to pick a horse with a lot of blood and plenty of type. I’d rather leave it to someone else to discover the young stallions, it’s a big risk to go down that road,” Eamon said.

I think your mare line is 70% of breeding, you can’t expect everything to come from the stallion, so you really have to focus on your foundation mare line

With regards to other training and development, Eamon completed his Horse Sport Ireland Level 1 coaching exam a few years ago and is hoping to do his Level 2 in time. He finds courses are good to keep your finger on the pulse.

Eamon has simple and straight forward advice for young people hoping to get into the breeding industry, the first being to have a good mentor that won’t send you wrong, and also knowing what you want to breed.

He stressed the importance of a good mare: “I think your mare line is 70% of breeding, you can’t expect everything to come from the stallion, so you really have to focus on your foundation mare line.

“All the information is there if you look it up on Capalloir. You can check out everything from the get go and see what that family has produced. If you study those lines and see what has worked for your mare in the past and what stallions were used in the past you can’t go too far wrong.

“If you look back at a mare line and there’s only a couple of 1.10m/1.20m horses appearing here and there, you’re not going to be able to produce the goods unfortunately,” Eamon said.

When foaling down, Eamon has cameras set up in the calving pen

Foaling season comes in hot on the heels after calving season and Eamon likes to keep things running as smoothly as possible. When breeding, Eamon prefers to not have his mares leaving the farm so he does his own AI at home to avoid this: “it’s too much stress on the mare and it’s tough on the foals,” Eamon said.

Generally none of Eamon’s stock will leave the farm until they are three years of age.

When foaling down, Eamon has cameras set up in the calving pen, so once the last calf is born, generally the first week in April, Eamon will then go in and clean out that whole area and the mares will go in there under the cameras at night. They go out in the paddock beside the yard during the day so he can keep a close eye on them.