Team Nijhof

Business Report
• text
: NICOLE RIETMAN-REIJN
• photos : KARIN VAN DER MEUL
Team Nijhof
“A stallion that performs well is
a real marketing machine”
Former World Champion Young
Dressage Horse, Florencio, pictured
here with Henk Nijhof Jr., is one of
Team Nijhof’s showcase stallions.
Eric van der Vleuten recently purchased a share of the stallion VDL Groep Verdi (Quidam de Revel out of
Clarissa by Landgraf I, breeder: Veehandel Musterd) from Kees van den Oetelaar. Team Nijhof, which also has
a share in the stallion, was relieved because talented stallions are the billboards of their business. The Nijhof
family, which includes Henk Sr., Jeannette, and Henk Jr., has dedicated their lives to their multi-faceted horse
business.
Henk Sr. is the founder of Team Nijhof, a
business which includes a stud farm
EU-station, equestrian facility, foal barn,
and a sales barn in the Dutch town of
Geesteren. He travels often for the sales
side of his business, both domestically and
abroad; and he advises breeders. Henk Jr.
mainly handles the stallions and sales.
Jeannette keeps the books and deals with
the administrative side of the breedings
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and the logistics of shipping semen.
Henk Sr.: “My grandfather started this
business as a mixed-use farm, and he had
a great love of horses. My father founded
the riding association here in Geesteren.
When I was twenty, I got a very painful
hernia and couldn’t do a lot of the work
anymore, so I immersed myself in the
horses and really studied them. Then I
became a KWPN judge, trained instructors
at the federation, sat on exam committees, trained judges, and built jump
courses. I wanted to know everything, and
I did everything. When my parents became
older, I decided to down-size the farm and
expand the horse business. We went from
ten to twenty horses, and then we grew to
a business with more than six hundred
horses. I’m very pleased that I’ve been
able to keep my children involved. Henk
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was always enthusiastic, but Jeannette
first worked for several government ministries for a while. When our business grew
at the international level, I really needed
someone who could handle it. That’s when
Jeannette started here, and things have
worked out really well.”
The Customer is King
“Because we have everything here, our
summer season is totally different than
our winter season. In summer, the focus
is on the stallions: breedings, inseminations, and shipping semen. We do inseminations here as well as at the mares’
locations,” explains Henk Jr.
Jeannette adds: “We don’t do many offsite inseminations because we’ve offered
very reasonable vet fees here for years.
For € 100 a mare can get rectal palpations
the entire breeding season. If a mare gets
pregnant with the first insemination, that
€ 100 may be a bit much, but the owner
can have the mare palpated again in
three-, six-, and nine weeks, and in three
months. The price is definitely affordable
for horses that are difficult to get pregnant.
It’s a good deal for breeders, and it’s easy
for us to manage. We can give mares extra
attention, if they need it.”
Henk Jr.: “We can also do that because
we have so much room here. If we only
had ten or fifteen stalls available, we
couldn’t give the mares all the attention
they deserve. In the summer, we can
keep about 200 mares, 50 of which go in
pasture. Of course, we also have owners
who trailer their mares back and forth.
The customer is king: they get what they
want. That means working seven days a
week in the summer.”
Three Stallion Categories
Team Nijhof has three categories of stallions. “We have old, proven stallions like
Heartbreaker, Clinton, and Florencio;
seven-, eight-, and nine-year-old stallions
that compete in the sport like Verdi, Quality Time, and Johnson; and several young
stallions, such as Breitling, for which we
have high expectations but that are relatively unknown and don’t compete regular-
Clinton is one of the old proven stallions which have made Team Nijhof great.
ly. Our group of seven-, eight-, and nineyear-olds that represent us in the sport
and breeding has never been so big. We
now have a total of nine,” explains Henk
Jr. Jeroen Dubbeldam and Maikel and Eric
van der Vleuten ride the jumpers; Joyce
Lenaerts and Hans Peter Minderhoud ride
the dressage horses.
Until recently, jumper rider Hanno Ellerman was affiliated with Stal Nijhof. Henk
Jr.: “He trained seven of the nine stallions
I mentioned and did a very good job with
them. It’s really too bad that he left. It’s
really difficult to tie a rider of that level,
who can get along with different horses,
to a show barn.”
“But the alternative we have now is
working very well. If Hanno, for instance,
wanted to show at Jumping Amsterdam,
we had to pay a lot of money for that.
Eric and Jeroen can show almost
anywhere. They’re among the top 30
best jumper riders in the world. Initially,
we didn’t choose this way of competing
our stallions, but it’s working really well,”
adds Jeannette.
Heartbreaker is one of Team Nijhof’s older proven stallions and Jeannette’s favorite.
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Expert Advice
Henk Nijhof Sr. is a passionate horseman
who is always looking for new blood to
improve his breeding business. In addition, he enjoys giving his clients professional advice in choosing the right stallion
for a mare. Nijhof: “I’d like to see young
stallion keepers do more advising. In
my view, they don’t always give enough
thought to whether the mare owner is
making the right choice. A breeder will
come with a coarse mare, and the stallion
keeper will nonchalantly breed it to a
burly stallion. I can assure you that such
a breeder won’t leave my property before
I have a good talk with him and maybe
even push for my choice because the
same mare owner will ask me to sell the
foal a year later. However, I also think that
mare owners should learn more about
the lines out of which their mares come
and how their mares breed. Breeding
isn’t a matter of stacking high indexes.
One always has to search for a balance
between the outside and the inside of a
horse. The inside is particularly important.
That gets far too little attention. Those
are things that we sometimes have good
discussions about at our business when a
mare is here. Of course, the breeder has
the last word and shouldn’t be forced to
make a choice he doesn’t stand behind,
but the stallion keeper’s advisory role is
very important.”
Discover New Talent
The breeding station began operation in
1998. Jeannette: “It took off right away.
We grew from 100 mares to 1,100 mares.
Back then we had stallions like Voltaire,
Larino, Clinton, Heartbreaker, Burggraaf,
Calvados, Manhattan, and Wolfgang. In
those years, we didn’t spend enough time
discovering new talent, which is why we
weren’t in the top ranks of the sport for
several years.”
“I think we now have talented seven-,
eight-, and nine-year-old horses that
can do that challenging work. But, of
course, it all still has to happen. Verdi is
now nine, and he’s on the A-team with
Maikel van der Vleuten. I hope that
Quality Time (Quantum x H-Cortonne
s.Cantus, breeder: F.G. van Leuken),
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Henk Sr., pictured with a young Florencio, is the founder of the business that buys and sells many horses both
domestically and abroad. He also advises breeders.
who Jeroen Dubbeldam shows Grand
Prix, will also achieve that,” says Henk
Jr. His win at the Dutch Championship
recently will certainly increase the chances of that happening.
Jeannette adds: “That A-team isn’t everything for us, but what the stallions can do
well themselves, they pass on to their
offspring. That’s what stallions like Voltaire,
Concorde, and Burggraaf have done, so we
set the bar very high for ourselves and try
to get our current stallions to that level.”
World-Class Sport and Breeding
World-class sport and breeding are often
difficult to combine, but Team Nijhof
manages to do it. Henk Jr.: “We make our
living from breeding, so we have to keep
the stallions breeding as long as possible,
but most riders don’t like that. However, if
Verdi and Quality Time have a serious
chance of making the team for London
next year, then we’ll give sport the priority.
Right now, we’re not giving serious consideration to that; it’s still too far away.”
Jeannette continues: “We can decide to
stop breeding three months before a big
show, whether it’s the European Championships, World Championships, or the Olym-
pics. The mares can still be inseminated
with frozen semen. Of course, some mare
owners won’t want that, so we’ll lose them.
Some stallions are better when they can
keep breeding; each behaves differently.”
“All our older proven stallions have
combined sport and breeding as much as
possible, but I really understand that
riders don’t want that. They want just one
thing, and that’s to focus on riding. I think
if a rider can really compete for a place on
the team, then the sport should take priority,” explains Henk Jr.
Business Overlap
As Henk Jr. explained, summers are very
different for the business than winters.
According to Jeannette: “When the breeding season is over, we’re busy with the AI
station and freezing semen. Once the breeders’ mares leave, we focus more on sales:
selling young horses and buying foals. Of
course, there’s some overlap because we
also buy and sell in the summer. We mainly
sell young horses, and they go to pasture
in the spring, so it’s difficult to take a few
out of the herd to show to customers. In
the winter, it’s a lot easier because they’re
in the barn, so we can easily take several
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out of their stalls one after the other to
show buyers. By that time, we also have
radiographs on the horses, and we know
more about them so everything goes
faster.” On average, Team Nijhof employs
15 people who are familiar with all aspects
of the business and can work in any part of
it. “The people who inseminate the mares
in summer can work with the young horses
in winter,” says Jeannette.
Joining KWPN Selection in
Progress
Interestingly, Team Nijhof prepares few
stallions for the KWPN Stallion Show. Henk
Jr. explains: “We often wait until the
horses are older, although we try to get
them approved by a studbook with less
requirements than the KWPN. That’s not
to say that we’re taken for fools by lesser
quality horses that are approved by a
different studbook. We go for top quality.
Once our stallions get approved, we lease
them for a year or two. If they’re good
enough after two years, we try to get
them into the KWPN selections, either
through the Pavo Cup, the VION Cup, or
the stallion selection in December, when
they’re presented under saddle. That
happened two years ago with Quality
Time and a year ago with both Eldorado
van de Zeshoek (Clinton x Bijou Orai s.
Toulon, breeder: P. Merckx of Stekene)
and Spartacus (Stakkato x Galina s.Grannus, breeder: F.Ch. Amend of Hannover);
and recently Q.Breitling (s.Quintero) is
approved by the KWPN through this route.
Eldorado is doing well under Jeroen
Dubbeldam in the 1.40m, and Spartacus is
doing nicely in the 1.50m with Eric van der
Vleuten. We think that the stallions we
present to the KWPN really have to add
value to the studbook. If that’s not evident
after two years of breeding for another
studbook, then we sell the stallions as
sport horses. However, I’m not saying that
we’ll never send our stallions through the
regular KWPN selection process. If our
stallions produce really good offspring,
then we naturally like to show those as
three-year-olds, but in recent years, we’ve
gone down a different path.”
Jeannette adds to her brother’s words: “Of
course, the Stallion Show celebration is
wonderful. That should never change.”
Henk Sr.: “That’s right. The problem is that
no one can tell how a three-year-old will
turn out, so the KWPN should continue to
allow older stallions to join the selections
in progress. People should look at conformation and make sure that their horses are
healthy. All that information is necessary,
and it’s good to already have it on a horse
that young age. But I find it difficult to
watch three-year-olds in that environment,
surrounded by such a big audience. I think
there should be room to accept horses
when they’re older, and there is.”
Most of Team Nijhof’s stallions are from
their own foal farm and were purchased as
foals, with the exception of a few older
horses. “Eldorado was three when we
bought him; Warrant (Numero Uno x Karanta keur pref prest s.Nimmerdor, breeder: G.
Reuls) was four. The oldest stallion we’ve
ever bought is Wizzerd (Indoctro x
S-Maywies keur sport(jump) s.Corland,
breeder: comb. Wessels/Vetker). He was
five. But those are the exceptions,” says
Henk Jr.
A Marketing Machine
Team Nijhof keeps thirty horses in its
sport barn, most of which came from their
foal farm. A few were home-bred. Three
employees care for and train the horses.
Henk Jr.: “We have about 150 foals every
year; 95% of those we buy, and 5% we
breed from our own stock. We don’t focus
very much on breeding our own horses,
so we don’t have dam-lines that we’ve
bred for years, like Van de Lageweg, Van
Norel, and Venderbosch. Maybe that’s in
our future. If we can get a good price for a
young mare now, we sell her. We don’t do
that with the breeding stallions. They can
try to drive us crazy if they want, but we
don’t sell them. We want to keep the stallions we have as long as possible - maybe
forever. Otherwise, everything here is for
sale. That’s why we’ve never been able to
build up a serious stock of mares.”
“We’re constantly striving to get our stallions to Grand Prix, so breeders see them
everywhere. It’s nice advertising for mare
owners who have foals by these stallions
because they can sell their horses easier. It
has a huge impact on the entire horse
business. We’re not the only ones who
make money on the stallions: consider
what the Dutch horse industry - mare
owners, riders, trainers, dealers, just name
them - earns on offspring of Concorde,
Heartbreaker, and Voltaire, for example. It’s
a huge machine. Maybe it sounds a bit
idealistic, but marketing a good stallion
helps a lot of people make money. A stallion that performs well is a nice marketing
machine for everyone,” explains Jeannette.
Henk Sr.: “If we had sold stallions like
Concorde, Voltaire, Clinton, and Heartbreaker, Team Nijhof wouldn’t be what it is
now. Those horses have given us huge
name-recognition. People now know
how to find us.”
www.team-nijhof.nl
Most of Team Nijhof’s stallions are from its foal farm and were purchased as foals.
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