By Kim Lundin
Photography: Kim Lundin
For more than 10 years, Evi Bengtsson competed with her mare, Kuschel’s Ulika, and resisted many bids from people wanting to buy the horse. It was a fortuitous decision as this was the competition mare with whom she founded a breeding business based on embryo transfer.
On their Stall Basten farm outside Itzehoe, northwest of Hamburg, Rolf-Göran and Evi, have created their equestrian lifestyle, and Stall Bengtsson has been the well-known base for their competition activities for a few years now.
Very soon the business will become just as well known for performance breeding using meritorious mares with their own successful sports careers. Evi Bengtsson rides and still competes at a certain level, but stopped internationally almost two years ago when she broke her foot. Instead, she has allowed her successful mare, Kuschel's Ulika (Colman - Milka I x Contender) and her full sister Kuschel’s Elika, to form the backbone of what has become a real breeding foundation in recent years. “With each year we have made a few more foals, it happens easily when you use embryo transfer, and it can happen that you collect more than one fertilized egg from a flush so you want to use both,” Evi Bengtsson explains.
The breeding business
Evi’s first breeding was Lord Pico born in 2010 from her competition mare Witte Zora. “It was more product that came from the heart rather than from a serious investment strategy,” she remembers, and continued by saying, “With the foals from Kuschel’s Ulika and her family, it is quite a different venture and forward planning.
“My competition horse Ulika has a heart like a lion, so sensitive and soft at the same time, she is more a family member than just a horse. Her breeder Peter Kröger gave me Ulika’s reins since she was four years old. Fortunately, for me she was not selected for the Holsteiner Association's auction as a young horse, so I could send flowers to them every day as a thank you for that.”.. To read the complete article you need to be a subscriber
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