Saxon Stud Administration
State Stud Moritzburg

he royal hunting stables in Moritzburg were built in 1733. After the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, Saxon King Anton the Benevolent decided to station 38 covering stallions in the Moritzburg hunting stables for state-wide use (state sires). This resulted in the foundation of the State Stud Moritzburg in 1828 as the basis for state horse breeding. From 1871, heavy warmblood stallions of the Oldenburg-East Frisian breeding direction and from 1911 Belgian-based cold bloods were stationed there too. At the beginning of the 1960s, the stud purposefully shifted towards breeding modern riding horses. Also from this point, Haflinger stallions were used to build up a domestic Haflinger population. Furthermore, together with the horse breeders in Saxony and Thuringia, the stud was able to preserve the heavy warmblood breed.

Since 1992, the State Stud Moritzburg has been the headquarters of the Saxon Stud Administration which, in addition to the state stud and the affiliated professional state school for riding and driving, also owns the Principal Stud Graditz near Torgau. Saxon Stud Administration has been an enterprise of the Free State of Saxony since 2004. 96 stallions of the Warmblood, Heavy Warmblood, Cold blood and Haflinger breeds are kept at Moritzburg. In Graditz, 25 mares with offspring are used for remount production for riding horse breeding. The tasks of the Saxon Stud Administration include stallion keeping and remount production, conservation breeding of endangered horse breeds, training and education of riders and drivers, and preparation of horses for the stallion and mare performance tests.

The traditional Moritzburg stallion parades have been held in the large parade arena behind Adams Gasthof in September every year since 1924. They have become a real crowd puller and every year thousands of visitors flock to Moritzburg to see the stallions in action.