Knightfield Stud

Knightfield Stud and Equestrian centre located at Straffan in the heart of the limestone lands of County Kildare, Ireland, is an integrated breeding and training facility for sport horses. We are deeply passionate about producing top quality sport horses capable of competing at the highest international levels and developing performance female lines in the long-term interest of the sport horse.

Knightfield Stud is extremely conscious of what the future holds for the sport horse in Ireland. It is for this reason that we have imported the best stallions from Europe with the aim of strengthening the blood lines of Irish mares so that Ireland can continue to be one of the world leaders in producing International standard sport horses.

We produce horses to have the strength, soundness and temperament of the Irish horse and the proven ability and agility of the continental warm blood. This is being achieved by matching the best Irish female lines with Guidam and Caricello whose performance genes are anchored in several generations of both continental and Irish sport horses. The crossing of these two types results in a sport horse that has both the soundness and temperament of the Irish horse with good bone, stamina and obedience combined with the scope, step, keen mind and jumping technique of the continental sport horse.

Rearing

Our young horses are reared indoors with access to daytime paddocks. The foals diet consists of first and second crop rye grass, haylage containing specially selected herbs to ensure the foals have a hearty start to their young lives.

Specially selected minerals are added to ensure food blood circulation and strong skeletal growth. In year one to two these horses graze happily in the rich limestone lands of County Kildare, Ireland. At the age of three they move to our state of the art training centre. Our comprehensive selection system helps us decide what horses progress to a higher level of training and which fillies enter our select breeding program.

Training

At Knightfield Stud all our horses are brought on slowly and given the time to reach their natural level of ability. We bring each horse on at its individual pace and we do not concern ourselves with getting horses to higher levels until they tell us they are ready for the challenge. This policy has proved very successful for us over the last number of years.

Holstein Studs