Piber Stud of the Spanish Riding School

Stallion stable above and foal barn below at Piber

In 1735, Charles VI established the Spanish Riding School and recorded the bloodlines of the Lipizzans. He also built a winter riding hall in the imperial palace in Vienna, which is the home of the Spanish Riding School today. Beginning in 1920, the Piber stud, near Graz, Austria, became the main stud for the horses used in Vienna. Breeding became very selective, only allowing stallions that had proved themselves at the Riding School to stand at stud, and only breeding mares who had passed rigorous performance testing.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.

Foal pastures at Piber and below the yearling colt pasture with the lane in that middle that the mares and new foals use to get to the foal pastures in the morning and back to the foal barn in the evening. Watching a hundred white momma with a hundred black/bay babies coming and going must be one of the most incredible sights in the world