Hoof beats and Holsteins

Port Perry's Peter Heffering has an eye for spotting hard-to-beat horses and udderly fine bovines.

It's not a special gift, he says: "Whether it's dogs, chickens, cattle or horses, pedigree comes into play. There's good breeding families in all livestock." And don't forget about conformation, he adds. "One of my favourite sayings with cattle is 'production has never really been a problem with good management, but conformation is a tough hurdle to overcome.' That's true of both cattle and horses."

Sage advice from a man who's spent 40 years in the cattle business and bred some of North America's finest Holsteins at his Hanover Hill Farm. And despite celebrating his 67th birthday this month, the veteran cattleman is not about to put himself out to pasture. He's turning the page to a new pursuit - instead of filling milk tanks he'll try his hand at filling winner's circles with standardbreds bred at son David's and his Tara Hills Stud Ltd.

Heffering, a native New Yorker, says he's always fancied standardbreds and contemplated getting into the business in the 1950s. But as the old saying goes, good things happen to those who wait. Heffering waited until 1989 to get into racing. When a business acquaintance from Argentina who raced in New York couldn't get one of his horses home due to health regulations, Heffering decided to take the horse to his farm and race it in Ontario. The rest, as they say, is history.

During the 1990s, Heffering has owned three $2-million winners, has won the prestigious Little Brown Jug and the North America Cup, and has two former world record holders in his stallion lineup at Tara Hills.

Heffering's recent success at the racetrack comes on the heels of an equally successful track record in the dairy business. He bought his first Holstein in 1958 while working as a feed salesman and dove into the business for good in 1961, breeding and marketing cattle for the domestic and export market.

For three decades, Heffering's Hanover Hill prefix has been synonymous with top Holsteins. In 1973, he bought the home farm in the rolling hills southwest of Port Perry. It was here that Heffering made his greatest contribution to the Canadian dairy industry, breeding arguably the finest Holstein bull ever, Hanover Hill Starbuck, in 1978.

Starbuck was bought by the Quebec Stud Centre d'insemination artificielle du Québec (CIAQ) when the animal was seven-and-a-half months old. "He is without a doubt the most influential sire we ever bred," says Heffering. "His sons, daughters and granddaughters have carried on the breed extremely well."

Starbuck, who died last month at the age of 19, leaves behind 200,000 offspring on five continents. His semen sales reached $25 million with a record $4.8 million sales in 1986-87. His sons Aerostar, Raider and Astre and a host of grandsons have also sired prodigious milk producers.

Last year, Heffering decided to sell his Holstein herd and focus his energy on horses, beginning his second career in the breeding business.

After becoming a full-fledged horse owner in 1990, Heffering became a force to reckon with the following year when his three-year-old Precious Bunny won both the Little Brown Jug and the North America Cup, two-thirds of pacing's triple crown. Precious Bunny was the first of Heffering's three super horses.

In 1993, he bought a promising colt named Riyadh after his two-year-old season and enjoyed the ride as the game front runner willed his way to a 1:48.2 mile at Toronto's Woodbine, a track record he still holds. Until this summer he also held the world record for the mile on a half-mile track. That record, ironically, was beaten by Dauntless Bunny, a son of Precious Bunny. Today, Pacific Rocket - Canada's pacing horse of the year as a four-year-old - and Precious Bunny race around the paddocks at Port Perry.

Riyadh, who raced into his seventh year and was kept out of the breeding barn due to low sperm count, is now retired and stabled at a fertility farm in Kentucky where he bred nine mares this year producing seven live foals. His new stable mate, retired thoroughbred superstar Cigar was gelded at an early age and efforts so far to resurrect his stud career have proven unsuccessful.

Heffering says he expects to breed Riyadh to 30 to 40 mares next year, including six of his own brood mares.

So how does a novice horse owner become the first standard bred owner to own three $2-million winners in what amounts to a blink of an eye?

"I've been fortunate enough to hook up with some good people. It doesn't matter what industry you're in, you're only as good as the people you're working with," Heffering answers. He and farm manager Ken Trevena have been working together for 40 years. A lot of the credit for his horse racing success goes to trainers Monte Gelrod and Bill Robinson, who advised Heffering to buy Precious Bunny and Riyadh as two-year-olds.

The two trainers are still guiding his horses to the winner's circle, but today Peter and son David are focusing on making a winner out of Tara Hills Stud, a new property about four miles west of Hanover Hill.

There, Precious Bunny, Pacific Rocket and Chill Factor, a full brother to North America's No. 1 sire, Artsplace, command between $2,000 and $7,500 in stud fees per live foal.

But Heffering confides the success of Tara Hills will depend on the health of the sport.

"Everybody is cautiously optimistic," says Heffering, who expects Ontario tracks and horsemen to get a fair cut of public wagering thanks to a new deal worked out with the provincial government.

Sales at the recent Woodbine yearling sale increased by more than 20 per cent to an average $25,000. That's good news for a fledgling breeding operation.

"There's a shortage of horses. It's like the cattle business: You can never get enough good ones," says Heffering. "The demand is there."

© copyright 1998 Agricultural Publishing Company Limited.


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