by Paul Doherty

Ballyshan was originally set up by myself, Paul and my brother Gary Doherty in Carndonagh, County Donegal, Ireland when we were teenagers. The prefix Ballyshan is a combination of the road we lived on namely Ballyloskey and our nickname Shan which originated from our Grandfather Bob Doherty(Shan).

We both worked after school and weekend jobs in order to buy our first ponies and Gary was the first to acquire one, a skewbald mare called Queenie. Unfortunately Queenie had been beaten badly by school children before we bought her and it took us months to gain her trust. She taught us a lot about horses, horse care and riding and above all the importance of patience when dealing with them.

Inevitably when we grew out of her and could not stand to part with her, we had our first venture into breeding. She bred us two lovely colts and from then we were hooked on breeding.

Queenie unfortunately still has trust issues to this day but she is on loan to a young boy at the moment who she completely trusts and adores, especially as her belly comes first and he loves giving her daily carrot and apple treats and she will live out her retirement with him.

Our next purchase Beauty was a three year old blood mare with unknown breeding. Standing around 15 hands and jet black, we broke her ourselves and we had great fun with her for a few years before deciding to breed a foal. We spent the next three to four years trying to get her in foal but to no avail. When our local vet purchased a scanner we wanted to investigate further. Then came the dreaded news that she would never have a foal. Her ovaries were found to be the size of a pea and it was only years later that we found out that she was a twin. Hence the reason that she was so underdeveloped sexually. She unfortunately died in 1999 of colic when I was in my first year of College studying Equine Science.

We soon realised that if we were going to get serious about breeding then we would have to invest in some decent bloodlines so we purchased a lovely filly by Cavalier Royale and named her Ballyshan Lady. Her first covering was to VDL Arkansas who had just won the four year old class at The Dublin Horse Show and a stallion that we really thought a lot of. This covering produced us a lovely dark bay filly (Ballyshan Vegus) which Lady subsequently rejected and who our long suffering mum had to hand rear as both myself and Gary were away at college.

Ballyshan Vegus has since bred the winner of the three year old loose jumping qualifier for Cavan Elite Sale 2009 called Ballyshan Como (left) by VDL Douglas.

Ballyshan Lady's second covering, again to Arkansas produced a beautiful bay colt who we called Ballyshan Arkansas (below), who as a five year old qualified for The World Championships in Lanaken, Belgium 2008 to represent Ireland. Another full brother worthy of mention is Ballyshan Versace who is currently jumping in America with Silver Olympic Medallist Peter Leone as a five year old in 2009.

We have increased the number of mares over the years and we currently have mares by Animo, Cavalier Royale, Cobra, Lux Z, Ricardo Z and VDL Arkansas.

Our breeding programme is still relatively young and we have some promising horses coming up through the ranks to look forward to so we will keep everyone posted on progress.