Balt'Amour is fully Lifetime approved by Oldenburg GOV, Belgian Warmblood Breeding Association (BWP) & Westfalen, Rheinland Pfalz-Saar (RPSI) and ISR/Oldenburg NA. He completed the 2009 North American 70-Day Stallion Test with excellent scores. 

 

Raven (barn name) is an extremely good natured horse with a lot of personality. He is very easy to work around and loves attention. He is kept in the same barn as the mares and he is very well behaved. He is a homozygeous black stallion  and has the sabino gene with four stockings and a star and a snip.

 

After six months of basic Dressage, 2009 saw Raven in training with Nicole Shahinian-Simpson for jumping and then with Sonya Hazard for preperation for the 70-Day Sallion Test. After successfully completing the test Raven was given a year off to recover from an unfortunate injury at the end of the test. He fully recovered and has shown in the Hunters.

 

Raven is extremely comfortable to ride and is naturally well balanced. He can be ridden on a loose rein and still keeps the same relaxed pace. He has classic beautiful hunter movement, very fancy, and has jumped (in great form) over five feet in the jump chute very effortlessly. He really loves to jump too! He goes right back around to do the jump chute again if we don't stop him!

 

While we all focus on the stallion lines, and Raven’s are terrific, Raven comes from  truly great mare lines on both sides. A friend of mine owns Raven’s mother Papillon and we own Raven’s grandmother La Laureate, so we know for sure that he has gotten a lot of his good looks from them. Both are Premium mares in several different registries (Holsteiner, Oldenburg GOV, Oldenburg NA, BWP & RPSI), as was his great grandmother Lilly. He also gets his fantastic movement from them. La Laureate (Raven’s grandmother) was sought out and purchased by us because we liked Raven so much and wanted to breed her. She was a successful dressage horse with her previous owner, but we are mostly Hunter riders so when she got here she was taught to jump.  Boy, does she love to jump!!

 

Balt’Amour’s bloodlines are impeccable. His dam Papillon (premium Holsteiner) is by the imported Holsteiner Verband stallion, Ariadus.  He was awarded 54 bonits and a premium rating at the Neumunster stallion approvals. He currently stands in the #3 position in the USEF Jumper Sires list. Ariadus is sired by none other than Accord II, a stallion performance test winner and vice-champion at the Bundeschampionat. Accord II has proven himself to be a premium hereditary transmitter by leading the FN breeding value rating for showjumping numerous times. Accord II easily won his performance test in 1991, scoring 9.5 to 10 for showjumping, and 9 to 9.67 for rideability. His overall score was 146.04 scoring 138.26 in dressage and 148.47 in jumping.  He has produced more than 40 stallion sons, one of the more famous is Broere VDL Atlantic, who was the Six Year Old Jumping Champion at the 1999 Bundeschampionate with Ulrich Kirchhoff.

As of 2009,  Acord II produced over 60 dressage competitors and over 434 jumpers (52 to advanced level) for winnings of  936,475 Euros.  Acord II’s entry in the Hanoverian Studbook includes the comment: "His first foals are impressive with a strong, correct conformation and above average floating movements."

Ariadus is out of a 48-bonit States Premium Latus II-Laertes mare who is line bred to one of the foundation jumping sires of Holstein, Ladykiller.  His pedigree is rounded out by two legendary mares... Folia, the dam of the Holsteiner legend Capitol, and Heureka Z, the foundation broodmare of the Zangersheide stud.  While Heureka Z was one of the most successful international competitors of her time, she is best known as the grand-dam of the "show jumping horse of the century" Ratina Z. Through her stallion sons and daughters, Heureka Z has created a dynasty of showjumpers. 

Papillon descends from a proven mother line, with her dam, grand dam and great-grand dam all being premium or elite mares. Her dam, our own La Laureate, is by the notable Caretino son, Cheenook (Caretino-Romantiker (Ramiro Z)).Cheenook was a prolific Grand Prix dressage horse with progeny well represented in all regions of Germany in both the jumper ring and dressage court.  He was touted as being even more gifted than the great Holsteiner Corlandus, the 2-time world champion dressage horse and Olympic individual silver medalist.  But like any good Holsteiner, Cheenook made his mark as a jumping sire. In Europe, he had a jumping index of 157 (2006) and in the US, he was the #1 USEF Leading Hunter Sire in 2008 and the #2 Leading Hunter Sire in 2007.

Raven's Grand-Dam La Laureate received 46 bonits and premium status from the AHHA in 2000. His Dam, Papillon’s grand-dam, Lilly, was Champion at Dressage at Devon two years in a row and the mother of the approved Trakehner stallion Larazzi (v. Enrico Caruso). Lilly's full sister also produced an approved stallion, the Trakehner Libikus (v. Kaspareit).  Papillon's great-grand-dam, the exceptional Trakehner mare, Libella V, is the hand-selected, imported foundation mare of US Olympic Dressage rider Hilda Gurney's breeding program.  A mother to a dozen foals, Libella V is the mother of Ms. Gurney's former Grand Prix mounts Lavinia (v. Condus) and Leonidas (v. Condus) and the dam or grand dam of several approved stallions and successful FEI level competition horses, including Ms. Gurney's last FEI competitor, Luminence.

Libella V's mark on performance breeding in the United States is without question. Libella V is the perfect example of inbreeding/linebreeding at its best. The mare Livia is found twice in Libella Vs' pedigree, once in the 2nd generation as her second dam and once as the dam of her grand-sire, Garamond.  Of his generation, Garamond was Rhineland's most influential sire and one of Trakehnen's most successful dressage sires ever. He is the sire of numerous intermediate and advanced level dressage horses with an FN breeding value of 135.  Today, we still see the influence of this black stallion in the internationally successful and popular F-line of Westphalia as Garamond is the third sire of the legendary Florestan. Florestan and Argentinus are the only two stallions who consistantly produced offspring who excelled in BOTH International level Jumping and Dressage.