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WHATTON MANOR STUD is very proud of the last foal born on the stud this year, a Suffolk Punch filly named Skye and out of Jemima.

The breed is incredibly rare and endangered, but there have been a handful of Suffolk Punch mares on the thoroughbred farm for the last 25 years, something that the stud’s owner Peter Player instigated, his son Ed Player explains.

“Dad was always obsessed with rare breeds and we started off with pedigree Long Horn cattle, then we moved onto Gloucester Old Spot pigs and then Leicester Long Wool sheep.

“When Dad saw the plight of the Suffolk Punch – there are only around 25 born a year – he thought we should try and put our thoroughbred expertise to the task of breeding Suffolk Punches.

“We have four mares and had one foal this year. Our experience of them is they tend to reabsorb their pregnancies more often than thoroughbreds, and then there can be difficulties once the mares have got their foals – they can knock them over as they are so big. The genetic gene pool is also massively reduced as there are so few of them so it is difficult to breed them.

“Skye is by a Suffolk stallion called Jenson who is owned by Bruce McKim [of Thorpeley Rare Breed Stud] and he hunts the stallion.

“The filly will be sold on weaning, and we sell them to all sorts of people – farm parks, logging enterprises, to pull funeral coffins, some to show and some to studs to stand as stallions. We are very careful when we sell the fillies that they go to someone who is going to breed properly.”

Of the day job with the stud’s thoroughreds, Player said: “We have some lovely yearlings and we have eight for the Goffs UK Premier, seven or eight for Tattersalls Somerville, eight for Book 1 and 20 in Book 2 and a good draft for Book 3.

“We have a very exciting Dubawi colt out of God Given, the half-sister to Postponed. We also have a very nice Too Darn Hot filly out of Minwah, the dam of Grand Dame, and a Too Darn Hot half-brother to Sense Of Duty, hopefully she will have won a Group 1 by the time we get to sell.

“The horses on the track have been flying – after Starman retired last year we never dreamed we’d be lucky enough to have Group 1 winners so to see State Of Rest, whom we sold as a yearling, win two Group 1s this year was very exciting.

“Sense Of Duty beat the older sprinters in the Chipchase in a canter and she could go very close in a Group 1, while Grand Dame chould be a Group filly.”