Piber Federal Stud

The Piber Federal Stud (Bundesgestüt Piber) is a stud farm dedicated to the breeding of Lipizzan horses, located at the village of Piber, near the town of Köflach in western Styria, Austria. It was founded in 1798, began breeding Lipizzan horses in 1920, and today is the primary breeding farm that produces the stallions used by the Spanish Riding School, where the best stallions of each generation bred at Piber are brought for training and later public performance. One of Piber’s major objectives is "to uphold a substantial part of Austria’s cultural heritage and to preserve one of the best and most beautiful horse breeds in its original form."

History

Piber Castle was formerly the Abbey of St. Lambrecht. The stud was created 1798 for the purpose of breeding military horses. In 1867, it came under the governance of the Austro-Hungarian Imperial Ministry for Agriculture. In 1915, at the beginning of World War I, the Lipizzan horses from the Court Stud at Lipica (today located in Slovenia) were evacuated and placed at Laxenburg and Kladrub. Following the war, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was broken up, with Lipica becoming part of Italy. Thus, the animals were divided up between several different studs in the new postwar nations of Austria, Italy, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslovia. The nation of Austria kept the stallions of the Spanish Riding School and some breeding stock. By 1920, the Austrian breeding stock was consolidated at Piber.