A horse is a horse, of course, of course, unless, of course...it's one of the famous prancing and dancing Lippizaners, graduates of the horsey
haute ecole, associated with the Spanish Riding School in Vienna. The Lipica Stud Farm is where it all began, in 1580, and continues, except for occasional World Wars. The Archduke Charles wanted to create a new breed, stronger and smarter, to help his armies fight off the invading Turks. He figured that his Andalusian stallions and the local Karst mares would do the trick, so to speak; and the rest is history. All the Lippizaners come from the same six Spanish stallions, plus hundreds of Karst mares, and their progeny.
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It is a very big place, many, many hectares for the horses, well, the stallions, to roam in |
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The maternity barn, where the mares spend virtually their entire lives, getting impregnated, gestating, giving birth, nursing their foals, rinsing and repeating... |
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Among the interesting things...all the Lippis are born brown or black; the light gray to white associated with the breed is actually premature graying; seriously; only the horse-stylists know for sure |
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Big place: we did the tour, the show, then the museums and gift shoppe, and also watched a bit of the buggy competition going on that afternoon |
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Street scene |
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Stallion/stud barn |
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Extensive identifying info on the green and blue cards |
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Essential barn implements; not pictured: shovels |
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Feed |
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Ditto |
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Until recently and the use of micro-chips, the horses were lightly branded with an "L" on their left cheeks |
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Rider wearing Olympics shirt |
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Breeding experiment with African zebras |
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Back at the nursery: bottle-feeding a colt whose mom died; apparently, among horses, it does not take a village |
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The clearing on the hill above is the Italian border; Lipica is just 10 miles from Trieste |
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Ponies, not Lippis, for the kiddie rides |
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Super interpretive signage throughout; above, a newborn |
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They don't do it the old-fashioned way anymore at Lipica; here's a stud, in bondage and leather, going at it with the semen collection machine |
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Thus; "Lipica used to be such a happy place," I heard one of the stallions say... |
1 comment:
We saw all of this. Being a stud is not what it used to be...at least not for horses!
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