Change of ownership at Yirribee Stud

A well-known harness racing family from central New South Wales has purchased the renowned Yirribee Pacing Stud, regarded for many years as one of the leaders of the Australian standardbred breeding industry.

The Picker family, of Bigga, in the Southern Tablelands, about an hour from Goulburn, will take over the picturesque property on December 14.

“It’s very exciting—it’s all happened in probably the past four weeks after we travelled to Wagga and looked at the place,” Dennis Bigga said.

“My wife Jamie and I, along with our three children, are hoping to be fully moved in by the new year. I’ve got three other brothers who will also be part of Yirribee as well as mum and dad.

“We all work together back home on the farms, which total about eight to 10,000 acres. We use it mostly for grazing sheep and cattle. When it gets busy, I can drive back because it’s only about a three-hour road trip.”

View the official property listing page by clicking here.

Dennis said the horse property would retain the name of Yirribee Stud and they aimed to continue running it along the same lines.

“We’ll have mares and agistment, as well as prepare yearlings for the sales and do some breaking-in. We’ve already had a lot of people ring us, which is really nice,” he said.

“And with a great training track, horse water walker and other facilities, it’s a safe bet that I’ll have a few of our own in work,” he laughed.

Dennis has trained more than 300 winners, including two Gr 1s, and has driven more than 250, but said that over the past three years he’d shifted away from the racing side of the industry.

“There was a lot of travelling all the time with the racehorses and having a young family we just decided to cut back on the racing,” he said.

“We’ve been breeding a few and going to the yearling sales. I took two to Melbourne to start off with, which I’d never done before.

“It’s still early days yet, but next season we might look at standing some stallions. It may even take a little longer, but we’ll see how we go. Our main objective is to keep Yirribee operating as a fair dinkum stud.”

The stud was built from the ground up 38 year ago by two former plumbers, Rod Woodhouse and the late Ian Walsh, who became great friends when they were doing apprenticeships at the same time.

Yirribee was NSW’s biggest standardbred stud, and over the years has stood a huge number of successful stallions.  The partners purchased American great Jeremy Lobell to stand as the foundation sire and he sired Jofess, winner of the 2004 Perth Inter Dominion, as well as the Victoria Cup and Treuer Memorial in 2002.

Other notable stallions have included Lazarus, Village Jasper, Genghis Khan, Pet Rock, TinTin in America, Fear The Dragon, Warrawee Needy, Million Cam and Mister Big.

Walsh retired from his interest in the stunning property in 2009 and sadly later passed away after a long battle with illness.

Woodhouse decided 15months ago the time was right to step away, citing a longing to spend more time with family as the main reason behind his decision, but hoped it would remain as part of the harness racing world.

“When Ian died from cancer that impacted greatly on me. It was never quite the same after that,” Woodhouse said.

by Terry Gange, for Harnesslink