Manuel Tavares Veiga on horse
(oils portrait by Serrão de Faria).

This stud farm is located at Quinta da Broa ( "Broa´s farm ), at Azinhaga do Ribatejo, founded over 180 years ago by Rafael José da Cunha, named the Prince of Portuguese farmers.

Among the studfarm´s reptroductive stallions, there were two "Alter" blood studs, which had been offered to this well-know farmer by King D. Fernando, and later on by his son, D. Pedro V, when they visited Quinta da Broa ( "Broa´s farm ).

By family inheritance, the studfarm was inherited by Rafael José da Cunha´s great-grandson nephew, the Engineer Manuel Tavares Veiga.

The work he developed in his studfarm was remarkable, that´s why he´s considered the one who initiated the Lusitanian horse´s new cicle in Portugal .

Possessing a great and unusal sensitivity, he selected animals with physical and biological characteristics that he thought were the best to accomplish/obtain the warrior skills expected from bullfight horses.

  João Núncio, riding Sultão calling a bull.

Afterwards, he used the inbreeding method in order to purify the species inside the same breed an also to get the necessary homogeneity to fix its own characteristics.

After a patient wait, he was able to obtain from his work, horses similar to the famous ones which existed in ancient Iberia , selected during thousands of years to be war horses.

By this way, he achieved a real national goal because he had been able to fix the most perfect characteristics in his horses breed, developing through then, the genetic heritage´s purity so long ago asleep in the ancient Lusitanian horse.

The most relevant horses were, by the way, "Lidador", "Agareno", "Berber" and " Sultão" which had a very important role in the establishement of the studfarm characteristics.

After Eng. Manuel Tavares Veiga´s death, the studfarm´s initial quality was kept by his grandsons', Manuel and Carlos Tavares Veiga and after them, by his great-grandson, Manuel de Castro Tavares Veiga.

Since then, it has been carrying out a mare´s selection work based on the model, the lineage genealogy, the quality of the provided products and on the analisys of the usefuls characteristics.