The British horse breeder Shirley Watts, who runs a stud in Devon with her husband, Charlie, the Rolling Stones drummer, is threatening to sue Polish government officials after the death of two valuable Arabian mares she owned at a state-run stud in eastern Poland.
Poland’s agriculture minister, Krzysztof Jurgiel, is already facing the ire of the tiny but highly influential Arabian horse breeding world after he sacked three respected state-employed breeding specialists.
The two 16-year-old horses, Amra and Preria, died while in the care of Poland’s prestigious Janów Podlaski stud, to which Watts had loaned four mares in a cashless arrangement to help expand a valuable Arabian bloodline. Her two surviving mares, which are pregnant, were being transported home from eastern Poland to Halsdon stud with urgency.
Watts told the Guardian: “I am going to sue them because of the way they treated my mares. They also kept me in the dark.”
Grey Amra died on 2 April from a twisted large colon. Watts says the reason for her death was that she was transported by road only three days after delivering a colt at a clinic in Warsaw. “They should never have put her on the road so soon. It was completely amateurish,” she said.
Bay Preria, who had delivered a filly, died a few weeks earlier of a twisted intestine.
Marek Trela, the director of Janów Podlaski stud who Jurgiel sacked in February, said he had been powerless to intervene and felt guilty because the loan of the horses had been a gesture by Watts to him as a friend.
He said: “There are now questions over the ownership of the surviving foals. The initial arrangement was that they would be gifts to the stud from Mrs Watts. But given the circumstances, Mrs Watts is entitled at least to Preria’s filly.”
Trela said the foals were in good health. The filly had a nursing mare and he understood staff at the stud were looking for a nursing mare for the colt.
Trela said the reputation of the stud – which employs 53 people – was in the balance and its demise would have a knock-on effect for disadvantaged eastern Poland. “The stud’s existence provides thousands of jobs. A five-star hotel is due to open nearby. Our Pride of Poland sale raised more than €4m (£3.2m) last year, including a record €1.4m for a single broodmare, Pepita,” he said.
Trela, who worked for 38 years at Janów Podlaski, first as its resident vet, then as director, denied the charge of financial mismanagement and Jurgiel’s claim he was responsible for the death of a valuable 12-year-old mare, Pianissima, who died from intestinal complications in October 2015.
Trela said Pianissima had suffered the same complication as her mother who died at the age of 10.
Petitions have been launched for the reinstatement of the three sacked specialists: Trela, Jerzy Białobok, the Michałów stud director, and Anna Stojanowska, the national horse breeding inspector.
The Janów Podlaski stud, a sprawling 199-year-old breeding centre close to the Belarus border, is among three prestigious state-owned Arabian stud farms in Poland. With 500 horses and grooms turned out in neat, green uniforms, it is one of the country’s proudest and most enduring national treasures.
Family outings here are part of Polish childhood memories. Janów Podlaski is a household name in the equine world, with wealthy buyers from the US and Middle East who fly in for its Pride of Poland sales.
During the cold war, the stud discreetly supplied the world’s elite from behind the iron curtain, providing a valuable source of hard currency to the communist regime.
The British breeder Joanne Law said Poland’s three Arabian studs were “one of the rock beds of Arabian breeding in the world”. Law, who is an international judge and runs Claverdon stud in Warwickshire, said: “You can salvage bloodlines but it is how you use them that matters. No one can breed those horses as well as the Poles do. I am very sad for the three people who have lost their jobs but the effect on the breed is very serious indeed.”
The Arabian is considered one of the oldest horse breeds in the world and has been recognised on 4,000-year-old rock paintings. The qualities of Arabian horses – endurance, grace and speed – mean their bloodlines are found in most modern breeds of riding horse. They arrived in Poland in the 16th and 17th centuries as war spoils from battles with the Ottoman empire.
Stojanowska was sacked with one hour’s notice as inspector of Poland’s 17 state-owned horse breeding centres, including the Arabian studs. After 21 years with the agricultural property agency she was given a settlement worth three months’ salary.
She said: “Poland’s reputation for breeding was hard built, by people with passion who never watched the clock. Trela has been replaced by an economist, Marek Skomorowski, who says horses are his hobby. Once we lose our reputation, that’s it, forever. It happened to Russia’s studs and it may now happen to ours.”
Warsaw-based Stojanowska said the sackings had been “part of political games” by the Law & Justice government, which won the October 2015 parliamentary election pledging to institute “dobra zmiana” – good change – in state enterprises where central government is perceived as having lost control. The policy has already led to dozens of sackings and resignations from state companies including a major regional insurer, PZU, the main electricity and gas utility companies and the mining conglomerate KGHM.
Stojanowska said she and the other breeding specialists were apolitical and that the new policy was inappropriate in the breeding industry. She said the two mares belonging to Watts that died in recent weeks had been the victims of “bad luck and lack of knowledge”. Both she and Trela dismissed rumours the horses had been poisoned with chicken antibiotics.
On Tuesday police were at the stud as part of an ongoing investigation into the horses’ deaths that includes autopsies and analysis of feed.Janów Podlaski staff – accustomed to chatting to visitors from all over the world – have been under new orders to keep quiet “because of the problems” said a groom. In the stud office, where shelves are lined with crystal champion trophies from shows all over the world, Skomorowski greets visitors but will not answer questions.
The Polish ministry of agriculture did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.