CATALINA
Brand for the future!
National Cutting Horse Australia, has a new sponsor joining our cutting community.
CATALINA, is an innovative organisation focused on and dedicated to advanced equine reproduction. The team at CATALINA have one aim which is to advance equine breeding technology in Australia and to date, they have made techniques such as cloning and ICSI available to Australian sport horse breeders.
The company is based at North Richmond, New South Wales across more than 200 acres with dedicated sport horse breeding facilities that include an advanced laboratory, mare crushes, stallion mount, undercover stables, day yards & various grassy paddocks with post and rail fencing.
Veterinary services include, cloning, ICSI, embryo sexing pre-transfer, embryo flush & transfer, stallion collection and other traditional reproductive activity.
The Catalina team love horses and one of its founders, Lucy Bliss, has competed at the highest level of polo in Australia throughout the past 5 years and as a citizen of the United Kingdom, competed for her home country. More recently, Lucy was the first female to win Australian polo’s oldest trophy (The Dudley Cup) in 2021 representing the Scone Polo Club.
More broadly, Catalina employs more than 15 staff across specialties such as veterinarians, embryologists, riders and grooms. The team is led by Head Veterinarian, Dr Kylie Hardwicke and Chief Scientist, Jenin Cortez Polanco.
For more information: follow them on Facebook for now @catalinaequine, and the domain www.catalina.com.au will launched in the near future and Catalina is also on Instagram @catalinaequine and @onlyatcatalina.
Catalina was founded in 2018 with the desire to become Australia’s pre-eminent equine breeding organisation. To that end, Catalina’s competitive advantage was to be found in its development of world class technologies which were not only unavailable in Australia at that time, but which were only possible at a very small number of facilities worldwide. Fast forward to 2022 and Catalina has perfected the advanced techniques of cloning and ICSI whilst building one of the state’s largest traditional breeding operations, undertaking day-to-day activities in embryo transfer, stallion collection and live cover.
The reason why Catalina is a very interested in the Cutters is because they are an active participant in the equine disciplines of polo, show jumping, dressage and western pleasure. To that end, Catalina sponsors events in each of the previously mentioned disciplines, supports young riders and managers one of Australia’s leading polo teams whose players include Scone locals, Alec White and Jack Archibald. In addition, Catalina Head Veterinarian, Dr Kylie Hardwicke, is a keen competitor in western pleasure, travelling across the eastern states throughout the year.
Looking into the future, the team at Catalina are of the view that the history of sport horses in Australia is founded on the farm and the various disciplines that work with cows, together with farm horses that have adjacent talents in sports such as polo and western pleasure. Whilst farming techniques have evolved to include bikes and quads, we remain of the view that the future of horse sports in Australia will have its nexus on the farm. On that basis, Catalina is motivated to introduce advanced breeding techniques to rural Australia in an effort to both, enhance Australia’s sport horse breeders’ competitiveness globally (e.g. USA and NZ) and make sport horse breeding more cost effective.
The NCHA Cutting Horse community stands to receive wonderful support from Catalina, as they believe that cow horse disciplines are the foundation of sport horse growth in Australia and in particular, the sport of cutting affords participants an ability to compete internationally and blend bloodlines that have been successful in foreign markets with Australia’s renowned genetics.
Please join me in welcoming the Catalina equine reproductive specialist team to the world of Cutting Horses.
As the General Manager of the NCHA this is refreshing and we are thrilled to have them on board at the upcoming 4CYTE Autumn Spectacular and 4CYTE Futurity Legend shows.
Watch this CATALINA BRAND space.
Yours in cutting,
JP Chevalier
NCHA General Manager