This is Bellissima Farms Bruiser, and that’s what we call him, “Bruiser.”

San Cler Nazareth of Bellissima Farms was our herd sire for several years.  He’s a spectacular chestnut sabino stallion with charm and grace unlike any other, and he also holds some real genetic secrets.

Our infrastructure being what it is, and how we house our stallions, we needed to change things up for the health and safety of all horses, though.  We didn’t want to see Naz go, but our situation made it so that we had to make changes.  We halfheartedly offered him up.  There was a lot of interest, but we never pulled the trigger on letting him go.

It felt as though his prior owner had some regrets about seeing him go, so when she offered up Bruiser, we jumped at the chance for a win-win situation.  I wanted Bruiser before that when he’d previously been offered up, but the timing wasn’t right.  We really like the smaller Gypsy Vanner Horses, and Bruiser was right around 11hh.

Nazareth and Bruiser traded places.

We were trying to hold out during breeding season for Bruiser to make it to our farm for some of our mares.  The year kept inching forward, though.  When Nazareth was on our farm the 4th of July, we let him finish up the breeding season for us with our last few mares that we were initially holding back for Bruiser.

Next year will be Bruiser’s year.

Bruiser is a spirited little stallion who also carries a Pearl gene on top of having a superb conformation for such a little guy.  He’s hairy, he’s shapely, and pictures do not do him justice.  He’s one of the top 5 conformation horses on our farm.

We suspected the presence of H2 genetics and we were very pleased when he came back from testing homozygous H2 making him a true miniature Gypsy Vanner stallion.

We have three mares selected for Bruiser for later this year for his proving year.

Two of our mares with miniature genetics also have silver genes.  They are a no-go for our other miniature stallion, Benz, since Benz is a silver dapple stallion.  Homozygous silver horses have a propensity toward MCOA, which carries with it the risk of foals born nearly without eyes, and also, degenerative eyesight loss as they age even if they do not have immediately apparent birth defects.  Responsible breeders generally avoid breeding silver to silver.  We needed another small non-silver stallion for our two, small silver girls.

We also have a little buckskin tobiano mare whose personality will help tone down some of the machismo that Bruiser has.  He’s very respectful to work with, but he can be a real boy when left to his own devices.  A 25% chance at putting a pearl and cream gene together on a foal is a pretty good gamble, also.

We’ll see what Bruiser puts on the ground in 2026 hopefully.

In the meantime, he’s in the bullpen.  He should be a happy boy this summer.