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Sadly we publish this article a week after it has been announced that Zucchero has died as a result of a colic attack, our sympathy to the crew at PSI, in particular Zucchero’s rider, Frederic Wandres, who rode the stallion with such success in his brief career.

Zucchero – breeding is not always just luck!

Okay there are some who just get lucky, like the lady who bought two mares in foal and produced two foals, Zack and Sezuan, but most times really good horses are the product of generations of breeding. Hans-Heinrich Brüning has long been respected as one of Hanover’s most successful breeders. After the success of Zucchero, who was the World Champion Six Year old at Ermelo in August 2019, I caught up with Hans-Heinrich’s son, Hannes…

Hans-Heinrich and Hannes Brüning

Your family is a very famous Hanoverian breeding family, so was the decision to go to an Oldenburg stallion who was not recognized by Hanover, a big one?

“We saw the stallion, Zonik (Blue Hors Zack / Romanov), the first time at the stallion show at Vechta, at Schockemöhle’s stallion show, in our opinion he is an amazing horse. We had a lot of success with Zack (Rousseau / Jazz) and Zack offsprings. We try to breed good sporthorses. From the pedigree line, Zonik was a safe choice and we picked out our very good state premium mare, Performance – Prince Thatch xx / Donnerhall / Pik Bube – and it worked very well.”

Why did you think that mare would complement Zonik?

“We have a lot of Prince Thatch offsprings. With Prince Thatch, it is very safe that you will get a good walk which is very important in dressage sport as a good walk gives you a much better chance of a high placing. Zonik himself is a very modern stallion and we were breeding for sport, for the higher levels.”

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And yet you bred a young horse champion…

“It’s amazing!  My father bought the mare as a foal at a foal show. At first we bred her to Sandro Hit, and the filly from that we sold to Australia. Then we have a Fürst Romancier mare and now we have a very good three-year-old mare by Ivanhoe, she took part in the big mare show in Verden. So we have had a lot of success with that dam line.”

“Our farm has been owned by my family since 1430. My grandfather was a very good judge and rider, and after the Second World War, he started breeding sport horses. He started with two mares, in the last years the horses have become more and more important, and now we have over twenty mares. We do some embryo transfer, and we have in total about 25 foals of our own every year. We also do breeding management for our clients and so in total we have between fifty and sixty foals, every year.”

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Your family has always used quite a lot of Thoroughbred blood in the breeding program…

“Mainly Prince Thatch xx (Thatch xx / Stupendous xx), he was located near us, a stallion from the State Stud in Celle, just five kilometers away, and my father was a big fan of his. I think we had more than thirty offspring from Prince Thatch, and a lot of success with them, some very good performers. Our mare Performance must be one of the last Prince Thatch foals. Performance was a mare show winner and did a very good Performance Test, and for next year, she is in foal to Jameson.”

The striking black stallion Jameson – Blue Hors Zack / Negro – was one of the stars at the 2019 World Young Dressage horse championships.

That’s a change again, Dutch stallion – the days are gone when you used Prince Thatch because he was at the local stallion station…

“Times have changed. You asked why as Hanoverian breeders we took a stallion who was not accepted for Hanover, but at the time we picked him out he was not accepted, and we didn’t want to wait as we were convinced he is the right stallion for our mare. We are a bit more focused on sport now. Mainly dressage but also jumping. Jumping we are also doing a little bit more, I think one quarter of the foals is jumping.”

“With Performance we have another mare line, but it takes time. You buy a pretty foal, it takes years to know how good that horse is.”

Will you take over from your father?

“Yes, and I have a son, three years old.”

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Prince Thatch

The Thoroughbred stallion was born in 1982, and died in 2004. He was by Thatch xx out of Petroleuse xx (by Stupendous xx x Alizier xx) and was bred by Mr. Eisemann from Spechbach, Germany. He raced for four seasons and finished his track career with a “GAG” weight of 79 kg.

The dark bay stallion was licensed and performance tested in Adelheidsdorf in 1989. He placed third in the HLP test, scoring 132.04 for dressage, the third best dressage score as well.

Prince Thatch stood through his breeding life at the Celle State Stud and produced 993 mares that were registered with the Hanoverian Verband. He  sired eight licensed sons, including Paris, Prince Noir and Princeton, as well as 65 State Premium Mares. He also produced the Verden Auction price highlight Petrocelli (Prince Thatch xx x Falkland – sold for 110,000 euro) and had 80 offspring featured in the Verden foal, sport horse and brood mare auctions.

Prince Thatch xx passed on refinement and athleticism. This is proven by the several FEI dressage horses he sired, including the Grand Prix dressage horses Piccolino (Prince Thatch xx x Ganymed – on the German Olympic A-short list with Klaus Husenbeth) and Gestion Joker (Prince Thatch xx x Absatz – Anky van Grunsven’s former Grand Prix horse).

Hans-Heinrich Brüning – Breeding is in the Blood

Hans-Heinrich is an interesting guy, he may come from a traditional horse breeding background, but he has always been a thinker, and a thinker who is prepared to think outside the box. For his family, sport horse breeding started with his father…

“My father started breeding horses in 1950. Before that my grandfather had horses just for agriculture. My father changed the direction of the breeding and he bought two really nice mares by Abhang – that is the influence of Trakehner from Absatz / Abglanz.”

“Now one of our top mares is the mother of the six-year-old World Champion Zucchero Gold (for some reason he is just called Zucchero in the sport)and this very good mare comes from the line Prince Thatch, Donnerhall, Pik Bube.”

“The other important mare line for us is out of a Calypso II mare, with this mare we won three times the Herbert von Denken prize for the group of three mares from the same family. The stallions we used were Fürst Heinrich and Belissimo.”

The Brüning family have won this prestigious class at the Herwart von der Decken show three times – in 2007, 2009 and 2017

Do you think you have changed very much in your vision of the type of horse you are aiming to produce over the past twenty years?

“The conformation of the horses is really important but in my eyes, the gaits are more important – trot, walk, canter, for me the movement is more important than the conformation.”

Edward Gal and Zonik at the Tryon WEG

What do you think Zonik gave you in the way of movement and conformation?

“With Zonik, the first ones are now six years old and he has not had so many breedings, but three of this small number of foals from his first crop were in the final of the World Championship. Zonic has really good rideability and top gaits. With our Zucherro Gold the average score was 9.63 and no ten, which means all the numbers are 9.8 or 9.6. Overall perfect, I think. I like Zonik very much, he is in the world’s top ten Grand Prix horses with Edward Gal.”

Your son tells me you are going to another Dutch stallion with the mother of Zucchero – to Jameson (pic above) another son of Zack, this time out of a Negro mare…

“Jameson was also in the final at Ermelo, and he is a beautiful horse and we wanted to stay with Zack blood.”

Once upon a time, you were a very Hanoverian Hanoverian breeder now you are looking across the border to Holland, why this change?

“You can use these Dutch horses with Hanoverian and Oldenburg bloodlines, like Donnerhall, like Rubinstein, like Florestan, because then you have no stress with the temperament – the Dutch are sometimes a little bit hot, sometimes. And with these bloodlines it makes sense because the Dutch have a little bit longer legs and the gaits are good. I like this combination with Dutch, but with quiet German bloodlines.”

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It is interesting that the Dutch dressage horses have quite a lot of Holstein blood – and you have had dressage success with your mare by the Holsteiner, Calypso II…

“A breeder has to look not only in his own area, he has to have an overview – what is happening in the world. Look around at what you see at horse shows, performance tests, and then make your own decision, what is the right way for your breeding.”

“We have good young stallions now. At the last licensing in Verden we had an average price of €91,000 for the licensed stallions.

And many of them by Vitalis by Vivaldi, you are not interested in Vivaldi?

“Yes, we have out of our mare, Performance, the mother of Zucchero, we have a two year old black stallion by Vitalis, a top horse but we have not shown him because his body is still maturing and we have to wait and show him under saddle. On our farm we have a really good rider, Jessica Lynn Anderssen, the rider of Secret, the world vice-champion, and she will ride this Vitalis out of Performance.”

So perhaps the family Brüning will once more feature in the winners circle at the World Championships before too long…

Hans Heinrich and his winning line of Carina mares in 2009

Zucchero is dead, but International Horse Breeders still have a limited quantity of his frozen semen – Here for details