Black Hawk Farm Flying High!

Chief Bear Hawk and Carolyn

William Fox-Pitt and Parklane Hawk

War Hawk NZ

Stuart Tinney and War Hawk

Tallara and Mohawk

Black Hawk

Chief and Ryan

 Many of you may have noticed the increasing number of "Hawk" horses at Sydney events recently: War Hawk ridden by Stuart Tinney and owned by Corinna and Darren Huskinson, Chief Bear Hawk ridden by Ryan Burns and owned by Burns family, and Mohawk ridden and owned by Elizabeth Crosato. 

These eventers are from the same stable as Black Hawk who was ridden by Steven Bradley in the United Sates, and the immediately recognizable Parklane Hawk ridden by William Fox-Pitt and owned by Catherine Witt.

The Hawk horses hail from Black Hawk Farm in New Zealand, where Carolyn Jolley hand-picks each horse and personally manages each horse's development.  And there are a lot more Hawks about to land!

Carolyn grew up in Kenya, emigrated to New Zealand aged 11, apprenticed as a Photolithographer (alongside that movie guy, Peter Jackson), traveled the world for half a decade with Club Med, and settled back in New Zealand on the Kapiti Coast of the North Island.  Her first ride was a zebra and Carolyn continued to ride and compete (horses) to Intermediate eventing. A couple of years ago Carolyn focused on her sport horse producing and brokering business full time and hasn't looked back.

With time split pretty evenly between producing eventers and brokering sales of sport horses, Carolyn reckons she has the best job in the world, with the number of beautiful horses and the variety of amazing people she gets to meet and spend time being the reasons.

Black Hawk Farm has done well the last several years in the United States and England, and last year Carolyn decided to focus on Australia, and business has been good.  Carolyn attributes doing well in Australia (and everywhere else) to the four recurring themes she encounters as feedback from clients: integrity, quality, flexibility, and fun.  Fun?!  Yes, fun.  Carolyn loves what she does and this infects the people she spends time with.

Integrity and quality are personal values that make their way into everything about Black Hawk Farm.  Hawk horses are thoroughly vetted and assessed prior to being taken on board, and continually re-assessed. Getting a Stage 5 PPE for a Hawk horse is not the gamble people tend to encounter elsewhere. Rather exceptionally, Carolyn hands over the full vetting and welfare records she has for her own horses when someone expresses serious interest, and she encourages the owners of horses she brokers the sale of to do the same.  This is simply the right thing to do in Carolyn's mind and Black Hawk Farm is about to require owners of horses being offered for sale to supply this information as part of the terms of engagement.

Black Hawk Farm's business model is a bit different.  Apart from having both a sport horse producing arm and a brokering arm, the producing arm is managed by Carolyn but almost entirely contracted out to professional sport horse trainers, and even then how the training is carried out is uncommon in eventing.  Horses that likely have a long term future as upper level Eventers are placed successively with upper level dressage trainers and showjumping trainers, and ultimately eventing trainers.  This approach is part of an innovative producing programme that seeks to maximise the number of horses across the total training team and match horse and trainer ideally - this not only works well for Black Hawk Farm but also their training partners.

Carolyn considers Black Hawk Farm very fortunate to have some of the very best people as partners.  Simone Kann and Donna Smith of Balmoral Eventing train and compete the eventing phase of the programme in New Zealand along with Tallara Barwick in Sydney. Jaime Campbell showjumps the eventers, and Nikki Kitcheman and Tracy Smith handle the dressage. Vanessa Brownie singlehandedly trains the entry level eventers. Getting the right horse at the outset is all important and a few people around New Zealand are always on the lookout for something special Carolyn might take a shine to.  Wherever possible Carolyn promotes the people Black Hawk Farm depends on and she refers to them as Team Black Hawk.

Whilst Black Hawk Farm produces eventers, it also brokers the sale of sport horses irrespective of discipline.  There's no shortage of upper level eventers, mid level eventers, young rider jumpers, Grand Prix jumpers, young prospects across all disciplines including dressage, and family hacks are available.

Are there any particular challenges you encounter when selling other people's horses?

Very few, actually.  We take time to learn from our experiences and change how we operate to make everything more straightforward for clients and ourselves. There's a couple of things we're focusing on at the moment that we think need improving: knowing if your horse is likely to present any issues in a vetting, and people having good quality photos and videos to be used for marketing their horses.

It continues to surprise me that so many people invest thousands of dollars and years of their life to produce a horse that won't sell as they anticipated because of an issue picked up when a prospective buyer gets the horse vetted. I encourage owners to spend at least a few hundred dollars getting a vet to examine their horse before they invest anything further in it - use these professionals, they know their stuff, respect them for it.

And a long time before someone will consider vetting a horse they will need to become enamored through good photos and video of the horse.  It is so much easier to market a good horse when you have good video to show people. This has been such a challenge that Black Hawk Farm has produced tutorials on how to shoot good competition video using smartphones and apps.  They've also built software that shrinks videos to a size and quality ideal for uploading to their personal client web sites (each client gets their own password-protected personal web site that presents selected horse profiles!). Catch up with Carolyn if you'd like any of these tools - they're free.

Any final thoughts you'd like to leave readers with, Carolyn?

We take what we do very seriously. We know well that without owners and other sponsors of the sport there wouldn't be a sport and we wouldn't have our business.  We're always looking for ways to lift our game and the integrity of the industry as a whole - from what we hear we believe we're heading in the right direction.

Carolyn will be at the Sydney Three Day event to support the Kiwis (Donna Smith is competing), hug War Hawk, Mohawk, and Chief Bear Hawk, and spend time with anyone who wants to say 'Hello' - why not give her a call or drop her a message.

Carolyn can be reached on +64 21 972 433, carolyn@blackhawkfarm.co.nz, on Facebook, or via www.blackhawkfarm.co.nz.

PS: War Hawk and Mohawk used to be paddock mates in New Zealand until War Hawk ate Mohawk's tail off! That's how he got his name, Mohawk, forever linked to War Hawk.

Quick Link

• View all Black Hawk Farms horses currently listed for sale on Horsezone