Who We Are

Mythic Friesians is a family run breeding operation located near Biggar, Saskatchewan, Canada. We moved in summer of 2008 from Abbotsford, British Columbia to our new home in Saskatchewan. In August 2015, we relocated once more, to a slightly smaller parcel of land near Biggar Saskatchewan. It was hard to give up our 145 acre farm and go down to 40 acres, but the trade has been worth it - we now have an amazing arena, barn, and paddock set up, with beautiful rolling pastures for the horses.

Mythic Friesians is the embodiment of the dream of its owner, Allison Thomas (that's me). Like everyone else who comes in contact with this wonderful breed, when I met a Friesian for the first time, I was completely won over. After that, it became my life’s goal to own one, and eventually start a breeding farm. In December of 2003, the dream came true, and the farm started to take on a life of its own. Within a month of purchasing my first Friesian, the farm had grown to four Friesian mares!

It has now been more than a decade since we started breeding Friesians, and we have learned a lot along the way. Our first fillies have grown up and had foals of their own. Some of our colts have gone on to compete in sport, and others have gone on to produce beautiful sporthorse offspring. As we have watched our foals mature, we have new perspective on the direction our breeding program needs to take to continue to improve. It is a never ending learning experience!

We are members in good standing of the Friesian Horse Association of North America (FHANA), the only recognized representative of the Koninklijke Friesch Paarden-Stamboek (KFPS) in North America. The KFPS is the mother studbook of the Friesian horse, originating in the Netherlands over 130 years ago. We are also members of the Alberta Friesian Horse Association, which is the FHANA chapter for our region of North America.

The Mythic Friesians Philosophy
by Allison Thomas
Written in 2005

The way I view breeding is very simple. There are a lot of animals out there that don't have homes. Therefore, if I am going to actively bring more animals into this world, there has to be a reason. It has to be more than just 'Oooh! A pretty baby!'. That doesn't cut it. Any creature that I bring in to this world has to be an improvement, has to be working towards something.

After thinking about that for a long time, and examining closely the bloodlines of this breed I love so much, I decided that there was indeed a way I could help the Friesian horse.

Through no fault of anyone's, this breed has a very limited gene pool. As it almost died out twice in the past century or so, that is unavoidable. However, the breeding trends of today are compounding the problem. If you disagree, I challenge you to find a horse, bred since 1990, that does not have Tetman 205 or one of his descendants on his or her papers. Hard, isn't it? But it's not nearly as difficult to find a horse without an Age or Ritske line descendant.

These bloodlines are vanishing. The stallions are getting old and dying off, and fewer and fewer are being bred to replace them. What is left of the Age line? One narrow, lonely branch, consisting of Fabe, Sape and Jorn - and now the new stallion Alke. Fabulous horses? Absolutely. But four stallions aren't enough to support a line, especially when they are all so closely related. Thankfully the Ritske line has grown in popularity recently (largely due to Doaitsen 420 Sport) but with the loss of Erik 351 and Arjen 417, the second of the two surviving lines that descent from Ritske is in serious danger.

With that in mind, I declare here my purpose in breeding these great animals. I breed in order to support the old bloodlines. I do so in two ways. I increase the number of foals being produced by the few remaining Age line stallions, specifically from top quality mares. And I promote these stallions' offspring, in order to bring awareness to both their plight and their greatness.

That being said, not all mares cross into the Age line well. My mares that can not breed into the Age line will be bred to what Ritske line stallions are available. Failing that, I will breed to stallions with as small a quantity of Mark blood as is possible.

Is there anything wrong with Mark offspring? Absolutely not. Are there too many of them? In my opinion, yes. A lot of people put a lot of work into bringing this breed back from extinction. Now it's time to save the few bloodlines we have available to us.

March 2014 - I feel it worth noting that while I continue to breed along these lines, the movement from the KFPS towards focusing on the Relationship Percentage of the Friesian horses brings me great hope. This initiative has made a great stride towards promoting the bloodlines that were slowly vanishing. Kudos KFPS!

Comments? Questions? I want to know your opinion.

Allison Thomas
Mythic Friesians
Biggar, SK, Canada
ph: (306) 948 3939
info@mythicfriesians.com