The breeders Gérard and Christian Philip, with 5 different stallions and 25 mares, ensure the 6 lineages at the origin of the race. They respect the strict rules of reproduction guaranteeing that each Lipizzaner possesses the same noble characteristics as its ancestors. Moreover, their farm is classed as one of the biggest private stud farms in Europe.
They walk in the footsteps of Roger Bellon who was the first person, in the 1960s, to import and found a Lipizzaner breeding farm in France with stallions from the Piber stud farm in Austria. The horses in La Roque d'Anthéron all also have Piber as their origins, today the only stud farm providing horses for the Spanish Riding School in Vienna. In Piber, the foals are given two names, that of the lineage of their father and that of their mother, with the number of the chronological order of the mother written in Arabic numerals. The male receives a Roman numeral if its father produces several sons with the same brood mare. At one years old, after a first selection, the foals are marked with an "L" on the left lower jaw between the jaw and the cheek, with the letter of the mother's father's lineage under the saddle to the left and with the registered number of the foal under the saddle to the right. And, of course, the "P" of the Piber stud farm under the imperial crown on the left thigh. |
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