End of the road for the Cluny Stud.

The historical buildings of the Haras in Cluny

Back in November 2009, I reported that the Cluny branch of the Haras (National Stud) was going to be closed down. In May 2010, it was announced that the Haras was saved and had been given a ten year reprieve, but last week we read in the paper that it is finally the end of the road. The buildings are worth more than the income, or the value of the work done at the stud and it is curtains for Cluny.

As it turned out, since 2010, there has been no horse breeding in Cluny anyway and there are only eight horses and 4 employees. How you can have a stud without any studding is a mystery to me, but apparently they have been doing research into a national horse tracing/tracking system - not really worth keeping several millions of Euros worth of buildings open and maintained for.

One of the eight remaining horses

“Living on borrowed time” springs to mind and ten year reprieve or no ten year reprieve, it matters not one jot, Cluny Haras is terminated.

So what will happen now? Well, the council has come up with a fiendishly clever and very French plan.

The council has put a special kind of compulsory purchase order on the property. This is not like an English CPO where the authorities buy the property whether the owners like it or not, oh no, this is far more ingenious. The owners have to pay all the costs to prepare for the sale of the property, they have to find a buyer and then when a price is agreed, the council can step in and trump it!

Fun and games with ponies in the arena

Don’t you just love ‘em? Now who the heck is going to go to all the hassle of attempting to buy the property when they know the council will just step in and take it anyway?

So what does this mean for the buildings and the horses and the employees? What does this mean for the horse spectaculars in the summer and the horse events at the Equivallée? I don’t know, but I will keep my eyes and ears open and keep you posted.