I’d decided when Orbis and Colourfield were gone that was the end of standing stallions at Raheenmore Stud. The whole stallion business was moving in a different direction and it was a stroke of luck that I kept stallions for as long as I could.

My love was more for machinery than horses, which is why I’m driving round the field at the moment in a tractor with a hedge-cutter!

I spent 43 years looking after mares and foals. You started out moving mares before you went to school every morning they had to be looked after. Back then, some mares got very little handling. They were often only caught twice, first to bring them to the nominations and then to the stallion. We’d be out cornering them, running through the thistles in our shorts, it was like the Wild West, you’d want an army to catch them!

Yet, most people got the mare covered once and that was it, she went in foal. They knew their mares so well. The covering season ended by the middle of July. If you look at the stud cards, you’ll see my grandfather, another Richard, stopped travelling his stallions throughout Wicklow by 12 July.

When I first started working with stallions, there was no such thing as prostaglandin [PG] injections or scanners. When we first brought stallions to Dublin, covering had finished. In later years, you’d have people wondering if they could bring a mare into the RDS to be covered!

I started running the stud myself when my father Matthew, known as Willie, shoved the record books across the table around Christmas time in 1988.

He was more of a horseman. He’d look at a foal standing in a cattle pen in Baltinglass, Mountrath or Carnew sales and see the potential.

Grasshopper

As three-year-olds, they were sent on the train to Harcourt Street and led up O’Connell Street to go to Betty Parker’s yard in Baldoyle. They were hunted with the Fingal Harriers, jumped the following summer and usually sold at Dublin. They didn’t all get sold, some would fail the vet or it was a bad year for sales but Betty would have good contacts, like Max Hauri in Switzerland.

Betty was a friend of my father going way back. She had Copper Coin, sold to Colonel Dudgeon in Burton Hall. His name was changed to Grasshopper, he was sold to America and was on three Olympic eventing teams and two Pan Am teams.

My father bred him, he was by a thoroughbred horse named Tutor, next door in Tom Sullivan’s and out of a line of cobs Dad used for harness racing.

He had an attraction to driving because he lost a leg in a threshing mill accident when he was only 15 and that became his sport. That bit of a sportsman came from his father, in spite of us all being members of the Church of Ireland, he was one of the founding members of Wicklow GAA!

My father always had a competitive streak and won the All Ireland at the 1952 Ploughing Championships in the early days of tractor ploughing.

He’d spend Sundays ringside, watching show classes, show jumping, you name it, at shows like Galloping Green and Laurel Lodge.

The first mare I remember was another one he’d bred and sold in Dublin, through Jack White, to Italy as a broodmare. She was this really quiet chesnut Irish Draught. When you won the class in the main arena, you’d stand beside this red and white sign to identify the ones for sale. I remember the shock of realising Achill Belle wasn’t coming home, she was like a pet.

Croker Cup champions

Prince Riza was the first stallion here, then Hierapolis and New Account for one season before Dad got another offer he couldn’t refuse for him to go to Libya.

Prince Riza was a Department of Agriculture stallion and Dick Jennings (Department of Agriculture stallion and mare inspector) came here once a year, we’d fond memories of him. We never had any problem with Dick, he knew the horse was well looked after.

Blue Laser won the Croker Cup in 1978, it certainly was a big thing at the time. I showed him and my sister Alison showed Colourfield when he won in 1992.

Colourfield was one of the last stallions Bord na gCapall bought for leasing out to stallion owners – Euphemism [who went to Tim Carey] was in the same batch. Some people gave out about their [Colourfield] progeny, that they were hardy but the event horse; they’re not easy!

Another horse was Gypsy Duke, he came here too through Dermot Forde and went to Sam Burgess. We also had an unregistered Irish Draught, a bare 16 hands, by Lahinch out of a Laughton mare. He was a phenomenal hunter both here and cross-channel and a complete outcross so it was a terrible loss pedigree wise when his owner gelded him.

Last stallion

Betty and I went to look at Orbis. As he was already approved he wasn’t eligible for a subsidy available to stallion owners at that time but I reckoned he was good value. The poor divil went down on the ice during the bad winter of 2010 and that was the end of stallions here.

My father definitely kept stallions for the love of it, whereas to me, I was doing the figures, counting my time and deciding if it was viable. I kept it going for a long number of years, partly out of stubbornness!

I wouldn’t have it said ‘the young fellow got rid of the stallions’.

‘Colour’ and Orbis were here to the end of their days and were well taken care of.

Moving on

I never claimed to be a horseman. For me, it was more the challenge of getting mares in foal, although a reputation for managing difficult mares could be a millstone around your neck too!

We tended to work the old-fashioned way with the teaser, I didn’t believe in owners getting a bigger vets bill than the stud fee.

AI [artificial insemination] takes a lot of investment and Wicklow was never a good area for mares. The Irish Sea is to the east, Dublin to the north, Wexford people are always very loyal to their own stallions and west of the Wicklow mountains, it’s far easier for mare owners to drive to Carlow and Kilkenny.

Haylage was the way forward. I’d started the haylage business while I still had stallions and we’ll have 200 acres this year. My father sold loose hay and it was a work of art to build loads on a flat backed trailer. Three of them would set off in a convoy to deliver to dairies in Rathfarnham that still used horses for delivery rounds.

The small square bale is a great alternative for the one or two horse owner.

Word has certainly gotten around and we have lots of happy regular customers.

There’s a photo of my grandfather on the Raheenmore website, sitting on his steam engine, most things have moved on for the better but I have no regrets about no longer keeping stallions.

Richard Woodroofe was in conversation with Susan Finnerty