Lochoir seemed like a good choice of prefix for a palomino stud. We breed golden Palomino Shetlands but later we added silver grey Eriskays.

Most of our Shetlands have Birling ancestry, we bought them from as far apart as Aberdeen, Devon, Yorkshire, Shropshire and Suffolk. Some are Palominos and some chestnuts bred to produce good bright palomino offspring. By the time we moved up here we had sixteen mares and foals. We did not find the right stallion to buy for another year.

It seems incredible that when we bought our first Eriskay pony, Hollanden Lorna, she was to be the only one, a riding pony for me. We now have the largest collection in the world!

The Eriskays we brought with us to the Hebrides were Kestrel, our stallion and three mares, Jinty, Petroc and Lorrie (Lorna) who was by now pregnant by Kestrel. Later that year we tried to buy one specific mare but the owner wished to sell all his stock so we became the proud owners of a further six. Later we also bought one more mare.

Eventually we found the right stallion for our Shetlands, the palomino Kerswell Dollar, so we were now independent in both breeds. In our first year on Coll we bred one Eriskay filly Lochoir Cnoc Dubh, and two Shetland colts, Lochoir Crochaire and Lochoir Lochran. We put a further seven mares in foal, four Eriskays and three Shetlands.

When we had bought Lorrie we had been very impressed with a stallion, Craiggie Zannas Mhor, who was visiting that stud. To further our breeding potential we needed more than one Eriskay stallion so we bought one of his sons, Sgoth Airgid as a six month old colt; this turned out to be very fortuitous as all his other sons have been gelded and the following year he too was gelded.

To widen our breeding of the Eriskays still more whilst we waited for Sgoth to mature and to introduce an Island type pony we bought Scalpay Scalpay from Orkney.
In 2006 we finally succeeded in breeding the colt who we hope will be the stallion to fulfill our breeding ambitions. He is Lochoir Raasay. He is by Lochoir Assainte who is Scalpay's only entire son and out of Lochoir Tarrasaigh who is the only breeding offspring from Kestrel and Lorrie, they have produced our most beautiful ponies; his other great grandmother is Centaine the finest Eriskay I have ever seen. We have great hopes for him but we will have to wait to see if he really does live up to his breeding. It has taken us eight years to produce him and we will have wait another two to see if he lives up to his potential. Equine breeding is a long drawn out affair!

Lorrie was proving a very valuable brood mare so we decided to buy two Exmoors for riding. We have Fuscia, an Anchor bred mare and Poldark (Podgy) a Heathpool gelding.