Janów Podlaski Horse Stud

On October 6, 1816, Tsar Alexander I of Russia signed a decree establishing the State Stud Farm and Stallion Stud. The over 200-year history of this stud farm is a beautiful history of Polish and world Arabian horse breeding.

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Both the stud farm and its horses owe their modern form to a man who, for fifty years of work, never missed a single morning round - Andrzej Krzyształowicz, a great charismatic personality and a wonderful breeder. When asked about the definition of success for the horses he bred, he replied: "You have to feel the issue and be there."

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When it comes to breeding, I started to adopt Mr. Krzyształowicz's way of looking at horses. It wasn't exactly the same look, because I also had my own tastes, some ideal of a horse. Breeding is a constant necessity of choice. It would be great to be able to be guided only by your feeling of what you want to keep or sell. Let's assume that the stud farm is to have a certain number of mares. Their selection doesn't look like this: I don't like the one, I throw it away, and I keep the one that is of high quality. That would be too easy. Here, a compromise is needed between the interests of breeding, i.e. the quality of horses, and the interests of the stud farm, which must survive.

These goals are mutually exclusive in the short term, but in the long term they are very similar. However, to understand this and make appropriate decisions, the breeder and the economist must be one person. Then, as a breeder, no one will tell me that the money at the end of the year must be this and that, because he has planned three million for me and that's how much I have to earn. I will not order myself to achieve a certain income at any cost just because otherwise the company's financial plan will suffer. This price would be the sale of the best horses.

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This is basically the quintessence of the Polish breeding philosophy: to have the most selected, highest quality broodmares possible and to constantly look for fresh blood, not to cause too much relatedness. We are constantly looking for different stallions that could produce good offspring with these mares. In Poland, efforts have been made to achieve this from the very beginning. This was the most convenient way and it was the fastest way to achieve breeding progress. Because a mare gives birth to one foal a year, while a stallion can be the father of hundreds of offspring. So its impact on breeding is huge. One stud dog in a stud farm is enough. If it's good, it takes it to the next level. And the old Polish rule was that stallions were imported from the desert. Expeditions rarely brought mares.

Some people did not understand what the mission of the state breeding farm was. Why, for example, can't the best stallions be made available cheaply and for each mare? Breeders usually think that their "babies" are the most beautiful. And that's why you go to reviews and shows, so that by judging you can become more objective about what you do yourself and what others achieve. State stud farms also exist to ensure that private breeding is as good as possible. No one ever refused advice or help, even though it wasn't always what someone wanted to hear.

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However, there is something else that we will have to come back to and think about in the future. On September 28, 1937, Professor Witold Pruski founded the Horse Museum in Janów with an entry in the guest book. Due to the war, it could not be organized. I was planning such a museum, there are so many awards and trophies that I don't know what to do with. I wanted such a modern center to be built in the place where the "Wygoda" guest house is located. It is my great guilt that I have not been able to do this so far. And probably a challenge for his successors. When I left, I left the finished design of such a building with all the arrangements, and above all, with the approval of the conservator.

Author: Marek Trela

Source: “Marek Trela. My horses, my life” [fragments] (2016) – Ewa Bagłaj

Below you will find links to related materials in the Polish Digital Equestrian Library.